Now you’ve got buy in to your sales transformation strategy and identified exactly what training your team needs it’s time to put it into practice. So how do you go about making that happen?

What’s people’s first reaction when you tell them they’re going on a training course?

• How can you convince them the training is relevant?
• Once you’ve convinced them how do you embed it?
• And then make it dynamic to cope with today’s ever changing conditions?

Working through real examples is one way. When you use customer opportunities for your sales simulations that your sales people are right in the middle of  the relevance becomes much clearer. And another benefit of working with real examples is your sales people are creating solutions that will work for them and their customers too. Taking it to the next stage and combining training with on the job practice and feedback is a powerful way to embed the learning and transform behaviour.

Matthew Syed, author of Bounce; talks about why aspiring sportsmen are so keen to work with top coaches. “It’s not just that they receive expert advice; far more important is they are able to design practice so that feedback is embedded , leading to automatic readjustment, which in  turn increases the quality of feedback, generating further improvements and so on. If you can position yourself in this kind of feedback loop improvements will escalate in ways that astonish you.” We often use this type of 121 coaching in customer facing situations; with one company we listened into their sales calls and gave immediate and continuous feedback – they said that it was instrumental in them achieving a 30%+ increase in sales revenues.

Something I hear frequently is that this sort of 121 coaching is too expensive and should be reserved for executives. However, our experience and that of expert sales coaches is that the return on investment for 121 sales coaching can be 10 times that for classroom training and that few companies truly capitalize on effective sales coaching’s potential to increase top-line revenue by up to 20%.  As well as giving you the best return on your training investment 121 coaching may be the most cost effective way to get people to do things differently.

The other advantage of this approach is it makes the change dynamic. Firstly, the person who you want to do something differently is the one making the readjustments. This enables them to do things differently today and tomorrow – the “power of practice” is in their hands. Secondly, it’s dynamic because it’s customisable; they can amend it to suit the different customer situations and changing market conditions they meet every day.

If you’d like to explore how sales coaching could help bring you the sales revenue growth you need please call Cathy on 01189 526993 or email her at cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk

This is the latest in our series of articles on practical ways to transform your sales results. You can read the first two articles here and for more fresh thinking and regular updates on sales revenue growth follow us on Twitter @sales4growth

When you’re ready to start transforming sales one of the the first steps involves building capability for your new processes. So what’s the trickiest part about that?

When you call a sales person into your office for a performance review what is the first thing that comes into their mind?

• What can you do to make it a positive experience?
• How can you get real benefits from your performance assessment?
• How do you ensure that you identify the right training?

Perhaps the first thing to do is to sit down and spend time with them. One way to help people to understand what their training needs are is by starting with what they already do well  rather than what they don’t. By recognising their strengths, which is what you want them to do more of, you empower them to work out for themselves what they could do differently. Leaders in strengths based performance management and assessment work on the knowledge that when people use their strengths they are more likely to achieve their goals and objectives. Focusing on strengths makes them happier, more confident and better able to develop themselves and grow as individuals.

Effective sales force assessment finds the gaps in what people do in real life rather than what they might do in a hypothetical situation. Asking a series of behavioural questions about what they’ve actually done in situations that relate to the key performance areas of their job can help you identify what they’re really good at as well as what they need to do differently. When you keep the focus on the positives you can get measurable results from your good performers as well as those who need to improve.

And who says you have to do reviews in the office? Carrying out sales force assessments with sales people on their daily calls helped us to revitalise a regional sales team’s performance because we saw the gaps in their performance for real. Those barriers to their success which were outside of their control we put to the management for resolution. In this way we showed we were listening to them and were commited to helping them build their capablity. A positive experience for them and an effective one for the business.

This is the second in a set of articles on practical approaches to help you optimise your sales performance. If you missed Part 1 read here about getting people’s buy in to your transformation strategy. 

If you’d like to explore ways that you could build on your team’s strengths please call Cathy on 01189 9526993 or email her at cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk

When you want to transform your sales to improve results it usually means doing something differently. So what’s the hardest thing about that?

When you’re about to make changes how do most people react?

• How do you get their buy in?
• And how do you know you’ve got it?
• When is the best time to get them involved?

Ian Thomas, a leading motivational speaker, observes that ‘the success of the team is because of the individual and the success of the individual is because of the team’, based on his work with the lion prides of Africa. When you use the strength of the individuals you harness the power of the team which is a powerful way to get their buy in to do things differently.

Successful sales transformation programmes are built on strong systems and processes and their development is often the responsibility of the project team. Working with a cross section of your business, not just sales can be instrumental in getting buy in to what you’re proposing. Adding in a ‘Think Tank’ to develop and test processes that will really work is an approach we’ve used and the ideas teams come up with are often surprisingly creative as well as pragmatic. And because they’ve come up with the ideas then they’ve got a real reason to do things differently. Involving your customers is critical too – thought leaders are saying that a customer centric approach is one of the keys to realising the true benefits of transformation.

Sales Team Transformation

However, systems and processes are only as good as how often and how well they are implemented. The strong individuals in your team are often better equipped to deliver change. So does that mean it’s easier or harder to change their behaviour? Something I frequently hear is that the hardest people to manage are the highest performers. So how about asking your top performers to champion your sales transformation?

Nominating two ‘Sales Champions’ with just the right mix of skills, experience and credibility breathed new life into a floundering CRM implementation project beset by database difficulties and errors. We worked with the super users and they worked with the pilot programme team. The champions were instrumental in getting the project back on track and as a result the new system was launched across the business three months later and the two Sales Champions said that they felt recognised and valued. Once we’d convinced two top performers they joined us in convincing the rest of the team.

This is the first in a series of articles on sales transformation sharing Vertical’s pragmatic approach to optimising sales performance.

If you’d like to discuss these and other approaches to improve your sales performance please call Cathy on 0118 9526993 or email her at cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk

Three training must haves are:

1. Practice

2. Expert coaches

3. Motivation

Vertical had the opportunity to be involved recently in a good example of the right mix. The innovative ‘Host’ programme at Warwick Business School was designed to cover all of the key skills needed by businesses large and small. Delegates were senior executives and middle management who had fallen victim to our turbulent economy and who were looking to get back into the work place.

There were a comprehensive set of workshops, including one delivered by Cathy Bennett of Vertical showing how to grow sales by focusing on your customers. The delegates then had the opportunity to put their newly acquired and revitalised skills into practice in local businesses – hence the ‘Host’ Programme. The good news is that the majority of the delegates are now back in work or have set up their own fledgling businesses.

A large part of its success was down to:

1. Practice – embedding the skills with practical application using hands on case studies during the workshops and real life practice with their ‘Hosts’.
2. Expert coaches – with many years practical experience of their own and the skill to deliver it to a varied audience. Delegates really rated their coaches with up to 75% saying they were excellent.
3. Motivation – following redundancy people needed to regain their confidence and a belief that they offered real value to potential employees and clients. 50% of delegates gave the programme 5/5 in helping them feel more confident about gaining employment.

Three key ingredients for training that deliver results in the real world.

If you want to explore how to create a recipe for success in your business call Vertical on: 0118 9526993 or email cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk

Vertical is a highly successful sales consultancy.  We’re dedicated to delivering a measurable improvement to our clients’ sales performance. Taking our own advice we have grown to a point where we need to expand and are now looking to work with an Associate who will share our passion and drive to ensure that our clients’ goals are exceeded.

Who are we looking for?

We’re looking to work with a freelance Sales Associate to become part of Vertical.  You must have:

• Commercial experience, ideally in blue chip corporates and medium sized enterprises alike
• Worked on the ground selling with knowledge of the processes, functions and drivers that deliver sales growth
• A proven track record in sales management; experience operating at Board level would be an advantage
• A “hands on” approach
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• A proven ability to train and coach

Who are you?

Our ideal candidate will have energy and enthusiasm in bucket loads.  You will also:

• Have a keen desire to learn and develop
• Be results and people orientated
• Be customer focussed
• Be self motivated
• Constantly challenge yourself as much as our customers

Your industry background is less important to us than your approach, attitude and sales experience – Vertical is not an ordinary sales consultancy, so we’re looking for an extraordinary Sales Associate to join us.

Are you up for the challenge?

If so, or if you would like more details we’d like to hear from you. Please call Cathy Bennett for an informal discussion on 07885 030022 or email her your details at  cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk

For more information about Vertical visit www.verticalsales.co.uk

“Sales success is less about selling and more about putting your customers in a position where they want to buy…from you.  Traditional approaches don’t necessarily work in today’s market. The key ingredient is knowing your customer base, identifying its potential and working collaboratively to convert it. Don’t leave the potential to your competitors.”

Cathy Bennett, Principal

Email Vertical to book your place now – training@verticalsales.co.uk

Date: 19^th October 2010 – 9.30am to 4.30pm

Cost: £90 + VAT

Venue: Sonning Golf Club. Lunch & refreshments provided.

What’s in Store?

• Understanding the key sales drivers and identifying opportunities for growth

• Taking your business beyond current performance using territory planning & sales management techniques to achieve potential

• Aligning your sales approach and offering to how and why your customers buy

• Hands on experience in developing a customer led plan to consolidate and improve sales performance

• Personal action planning to help you take key opportunities back to your business and make them happen

The journey has been a demanding, and rewarding process which went through a number of stages. But what drove the change and why did I choose the name ‘Vertical’?

Well the first step was that I gained a clear understanding over the past two years of what businesses need to do to get results from their sales divisions. As a result I have redefined and streamlined my proposition to meet those needs. We’ve all learnt some hard lessons in this recession and one of those, if we didn’t already know it, is that you can cut costs to survive but growth is the only way to really succeed. Vertical concentrates on everything in sales that you need to focus on to improve your performance and increase your revenues.

The name ‘Vertical’ makes a positive statement about where I see the business heading; coupled with the positive affect my work has with all my clients. I’ve always achieved the right focus and results using my experience and expertise in business development and sales. However, to take it to the next stage and make it work across your business at the pace you need it to I recognise that you will need expertise and support in other critical areas such as marketing and branding design. Whilst these are closely aligned to what I do they are not my speciality so the Vertical Team has grown to include experts in these fields. One key member of the Team is Stephen Green, who worked with me to choose the brand name, helped to clarify my positioning and to create a compelling identity design and website. And that’s how Vertical was born.

I believe that the name Vertical portrays my passion for success and drive for continuous improvement; in your business and mine. If performance, results, revenues and staff morale are all on the way up then that’s ‘Vertical’. On a more personal note my maiden name was Green and my maternal Grandmother was Swiss-French. Many of you will know that ‘vert’ means green in French. The family connection together with the word meaning the pinnacle of success made ‘Vertical’ a perfect choice.

The website is the culmination of all these thoughts and ideas, it features a number of recent case studies and the news blog and will be focal point for all the new work I plan to do with Vertical in the future. I hope you enjoy reading about Vertical and find it useful.

If you would like to discuss a new project or business issue with me,

please contact me on: +44(0)7885 030022 or email: cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk

www.verticalsales.co.uk

In today’s increasingly competitive market you have to do something different to stay ahead of the competition. If companies are to survive the economic downturn they need to take their sales proposition to the next stage; beyond price discount selling. Solution selling is seen as the answer by many – but is it? Often companies invest a lot of time and money in developing complex solutions. But, if they don’t get the buy-in or understanding of their sales force, what they actually get are great ideas that don’t get delivered. The impact on revenue is negligible and the cost can be high.

So what do we mean by solution selling?

Some of the answer lies in what the customer wants. Today customers want more than just sales people with a good working knowledge of the capabilities necessary to help them solve their problems. They want to do business with salespeople who understand them— their job and their problems. So everything you do in the sales chain needs to be based on helping your customers solve their business problems and achieve positive, measurable results. Cathy Bennett of Vertical has found that developing a good relationship with customers and becoming an integral part of their business is the best way to deliver results to them.

So, understanding what customers want helps us to identify what a solution needs to do. Simply put; it’s a response to a Customer’s need that will deliver a return on investment and/or save costs. So your solution needs to answer a problem of theirs that they recognise and acknowledge too. To uncover those problems Cathy Bennett says ‘I would recommend that you just try to understand what their main challenges and opportunities are rather than find out what they need from the product range you’ve got available.’ That done, it’s important that the customer agrees on the answer to the problem that your Sales Person selects and (most importantly) that the answer provides measurable improvement to the customer. So in summary, a solution is a mutually shared answer to a recognised problem, and that answer provides measurable improvement. But remember – the measurable improvement needs to be real for them. With a recent project on Energy Solutions Cathy Bennett was at pains to ensure that the sales force saw that it wasn’t the 30% savings that counted but the 300k saving off the customer’s £1m energy bill.

Developing your solutions should be based around a feature, advantage, benefit analysis of your range of products and services. This is where you can start to close the loop of having both a robust solutions offering and one that your sales force understands and can deliver. ‘I find that the best way to get the sales force to buy-in to and understand the solutions proposition is to get a cross section of people across the business involved. Let’s face it they are the ones who are out there every day in real time situations selling against the competition in an increasingly price driven market.’

The last part of the puzzle is training. Invest in a programme that focuses on giving your sales force the ability to:

• Identify the customer’s problems
• Reach agreement with them on what is the right answer.
• Demonstrate how the right answer delivers measurable improvement to them and their business.

Then, when you launch your solutions offering, you will actually be in a position to deliver results to your Customers’ bottom line and at the same time to your own!

If you’d like to hear more about making this happen in your organisation contact Cathy Bennett on +44 (0)7885 030022 or email me at cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk

Let’s hope Andy Murray wins Wimbledon this year and is our first British men’s champion since 1936? In fact, let’s hope he does it in style, with the minimum effort. After all isn’t that what we all want and need in today’s tough economic climate – least effort greatest return. For sure, but before we talk about returns, let’s talk about our efforts or in Andy’s case serves.

What better way to win than by serving ace after ace – not just straight set wins but every game won with just four nice aces? Game, set and match! No doubt Andy has to practice very hard to achieve his success. And now is definitely the time to make sure that your team have all the right skills and abilities to go out and win business against tough competition. And that they practice those skills as regularly as Andy does both for real and on the practice courts.

But to make it count those aces have got to go in. Because one thing’s for sure- if you aim to win by serving aces then they have to go in. Double faults will not win Andy the Championship but will lose it for him. Well isn’t it exactly the same when it comes to developing and training your team? How many times have you carried out good quality training but haven’t got the results. So you like Andy have to make sure that you are targeting the right areas to practice and perfect. So how can you do that in your business? It’s pretty obvious to Andy where that ace needs to be directed and land but is it as clear as that for your sales force?

You may have already experienced a training needs analysis in the past that was a list of training courses with your staff asked to decide which ones they need. The courses might be brilliant but the danger is that your results don’t improve and sometimes even worsen. So why? Usually it’s as simple as a lack of focus on the business goals and objectives that the training could have supported. Also, are your sales team in the best position to define what their real needs are? What you need is clear definition of your business goals, an analysis that is aligned to these and then a robust process to make sure that the answers it gives are valid. And after all that you still want the best training at the best cost. Sounds complicated doesn’t it – maybe even as unbelievable as Andy winning Wimbledon.

Well maybe we can help with our ACE Audit – a bespoke training needs analysis that is aligned to your business goals and objectives. We work with you through its development tailor it to your business and objectives, translate them into performance requirements and then conduct the analysis in a very robust way to identify gaps in performance. Our experience shows that a lot of training solutions are already within your business and can give you the high quality but low cost that you need. The other thing we’ve learnt is that 121 coaching is often the best solution and, if we develop your managers to deliver, it becomes part of your business for the future.

If you’d like to hear more about our approach in getting your whole team to deliver the results you need in a cost effective and enduring way why don’t you call me on +44 (0)7885 030022 or email me at cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk

I’d love to hear form you and in the meantime here’s to the first British Men’s Wimbledon Champion in 73 years.

This will entail:

• A full analysis of your current sales situation
• A review of your market opportunities and potential obstacles to success
• Written recommendations that will propel your sales forward as the UK emerges from recession.

For more information, please contact:

Cathy Bennett at Vertical

The Studio
Ashley View, Milley Road
Waltham St. Lawrence ,RG10 0JR

T: +44(0)7885 030022
E: cathy.bennett@verticalsales.co.uk

This valuable insight into the sales performance and prospects for your business comes entirely free and without obligation.