Are you the sales manager who asks, ‘What did you sell today?” or…
…are you the one asking, “What opportunities did you advance today?”
What’s the difference?
When managers focus on the close, the deal, or the sale, that’s when sales reps begin to lose focus on the collaborative win-win sales process and switch to telling pushing and throwing out features hoping the customer will buy.
They go into survival mode thinking, I better close this deal so I can tell my manager I sold something. And they end up throwing their smart selling out the window.
Your job is to build people, not break them.
Alleviate the pressure to close more sales and demotivate your sales team.
If you want your sales reps to sell more and stay energized, then concentrate on what they are doing to advance each sale.
Ask questions like:
- What successes did you have today?
- What opportunities did you advance today?
- How will the client benefit by taking on our product line?
- What did the prospect say was most important in relation to our products and services?
- If you were the prospect, would you buy now?
- What was the objective of the last phone call or meeting?
- Why is it important to the customer to add or switch suppliers?
Incorporate these questions and variations of them as you engage with your reps.
It may surprise your reps at first. Your shift from, “What did you sell today?” (which demotivates) to
“What success did you have today?” conveys your belief in them and that they are working hard to bring in the business.
When Is The Time to Break This Bad Habit? As soon as you want your reps to bust their monthly numbers.
Alice Kemper, sales training expert and founder of Sales Training Werks mobilizes sales reps to crush their monthly quota. Check out the 6 Killer Hacks to Perfect Sales Training.
