Tag: sales tips

6 Ways To Create A Positive Sales ‘HUNTING’ Culture

Posted on | by Sienna
 

To genuinely create a positive sales culture, you need a long-term strategy.

Consistency and purposeful support, partnered with the following strategies will help you achieve a driven and positive sales team.

   

1. Listen To Learn

Provide sales podcasts and books for your team to learn on the go. It is a good idea to have your team listen to motivational material on their way to and from appointments. Information on communication skills and product resources can also increase basic sales knowledge.  

2. Give Feedback

  Managers can join team members on sales calls and give feedback as soon as the meeting finishes. Providing immediate feedback reinforces what went well and what can be improved.  

3. Allow Time For Change

  Learning and applying new skills takes time. Allow your team adequate time to learn and change. Remember, it can be a slow process before you see results.   The Super Bowl of Sales - Hunters vs. Farmers  

4. Measure Results

Use your team’s self-identified goals to measure their progress. Hold them accountable for their sales goals. To really gauge how much of an impact training has made, track your team’s:
  • Lead generation
  • Sales calls
  • Up-sells
  • Closing rates
 

5. Provide Ongoing Training

Benefits of providing ongoing sales training for your team include:
  • Increasing employee engagement
  • Improving the skills of your team
  • Team members feeling valued
  • More success for your business
 

6. Allocate Time To Coaching

  Many managers make the mistake of spending an equal amount of time coaching each of their reps. But this simple time allocation methodology ignores the potential return on your time investment. You should spend most of your time coaching salespeople with medium skills. This will provide you with the highest return on your time investment. Reps with mid-range skills are average performers – they have room for improvement. Good coaching can help an average performer become a high achiever.  
A good rule of thumb is that you should spend:
  • 60% of your coaching time with your salespeople with medium skill levels,
  • 15% of your coaching time with your salespeople with low skill levels, and
  • 25% of your coaching time with your salespeople with high skill levels.
  Your sales team can benefit from a fun, interactive and customised training program that will help you win more customers.  

Contact KONA to discuss tailored training options for your team!

Get In Touch Button Images – Browse 1,420 Stock Photos, Vectors, and Video | Adobe Stock

4 Reasons Why Sales Training Should Be A Component Of Your Recruitment Strategy

Posted on | by Sienna
When recruiting new team members for your business, there are many considerable factors to ensure your offer is most appealing to your target recruit. Generally, companies will hire established salespeople with the assumption that they won’t need further training. In doing so, you could be missing out on the opportunity to grow and develop the next top salesperson.

Here are 4 reasons why you should implement an offer of sales training into your recruitment process:

1. You Are More Likely To Retain Staff When You Offer Ongoing Training


Offering ongoing training to employees will make them feel valued. It attracts the right type of person to the role, someone who is eager to enhance their skills and wants career progression. Going into a new job knowing you will have opportunities to learn and develop new skills naturally boosts enthusiasm. Not to mention your business’ recruitment costs will reduce when you have a high staff retention rate.

2. Be Proactive, Not Reactive


It is common for businesses to only consider training their sales team when there are problems emerging. A more effective strategy is to offer staff training regularly. This will prevent problems before they occur and ensures any issues are stamped out early on. Incorporating Sales Training into your recruitment process will ensure any new staff that come on board are trained in the same way as your current salespeople.

3. Attract A Quality Candidate To The Position


Proposing a training program in your employment offer is attractive to prospective employees as it eases tension related to taking on a new job. It opens the doors to people who may not have a lot of experience in the field, but they are eager to learn and with the right training, could be the next best salesperson on your team.

4. Promotes An Encouraging And Supportive Work Environment

Sales Training has a positive influence on staff enthusiasm, engagement, and fulfilment. Offering training opportunities at the recruitment stage promotes your business as being supportive. It shows you have intent for employee growth within the company. Offering sales training from the beginning of a salesperson’s career demonstrates that your company is willing to invest in their team.

You can achieve these benefits and more by offering effective training as part of your recruitment process.

Find out how you can incorporate Sales Training into your recruitment strategy by contacting KONA!

Phone 1300 611 288 or email info@kona.com.au

Contact Us

9 Important Tips For Setting Appointments

Posted on | by Sienna

How to start a sales call the right way - CrankWheel

Business owners and salespeople often use phone calls to book appointments with clients and prospective customers. To do this successfully you need confidence in the relationship-building aspect of telemarketing. You have the responsibility of displaying your product or service in an honest and professional way and you are aware of the value of what it means to exceed the expectations of your customer.

But what steps can you take to guarantee your best chance of securing an appointment?

1. Have A Plan

 Preparation is vital. When you go into a conversation prepared with what you want to say, you can be confident that you are covering all important matters. You will be able to keep control of the conversation and bring it back if it drifts off-topic.

2. Make Your Offer Early
It is important to spark interest early on and to combat objections promptly with an offer that is full of benefits. You need to be quick to ensure negativity does not affect the customer’s decision.
3. Conversation Is Key
Ask short, open questions to gage as much information as possible from the customer. Your questions should be relevant to ensure you keep their attention and you should repeat their answers back to them when suitable. Talking for too long and confusing the client with your questions can lead to them tuning out of the conversation.
4. Handle Objections
Show the customer that you understand their situation by recognising their objections. Use phrases like ‘I understand how you feel.’ Let them know that you have had other customers that had similar objections when they first came onboard. This will demonstrate that you are experienced. Clarify that the purpose of the appointment is to understand their position and then suggest an appointment time. Competitive Objection Handling 101: Your Guide to Knocking Competitors out of Deals and Earning the Trust of Your Buyers - Klue
5. Don’t Give In The First Time
Objections are inevitable and when they happen, it is important not to repeat the objection back to the customer or go too much into it. Don’t take any objections personally and ask the right questions to better understand their answer. It is common for it to take a number of conversations with the prospective customer before they accept your offer of an appointment, so don’t get disheartened if they do not accept the first time around.
6. Don’t Be Afraid Of Uncertainty
Admitting when you don’t know the answer to something or needing to check with someone else is not a bad thing. Building a foundation of trust with your customer is so important and if you bluff your way around their questions, it is likely they will find out and that relationship will be damaged. If you have uncertainty around an objection or question, tell them that, and get back to them with the right information.
7. Research Before You Call
The more you know before picking up the phone, the better. If you have just a name and a phone number, you can still make an effective sales appointment. If all else fails, you can always turn to Google. Or, if you’d rather, you can reach out to your connections on LinkedIn. You can even check with your network contacts to see if you know anyone who knows the prospect. You may be able to get a referral from a mutual contact. The 18 Best Places for Sales Reps to Research Prospects [Expert Tips]
8. Create A Good Opener
Once you get the prospect on the phone, you have about 10-20 seconds before they’re ready to hang up on you. Most people automatically reject you as soon as you start trying to sell them. If you want to get past a potential customer’s rejection filter, you’ll need an opener that surprises or intrigues them. Something that will make them sit up and take notice. Once you have their attention, you can set up an appointment or at least get them to listen to what you have to say.
9. Pick A Benefit That Most Interests Your Prospect
When you have done your research and know more about your prospect, you can better customise your pitch to fit their needs or pain points. This way, you are more likely to get their business. Pick a benefit of your product or service that you think will most appeal to your prospective customer. Explain how that product or service provides this benefit to them. Our billing system helps give you peace of mind.

7 Essential Tips to Set Sales Appointments Geared for Success • Bookafy

Timeless Advice Is The Best Advice. Sell the benefits and value, not features. Come prepared, find out what the customer’s concerns are and present them with solutions. When you offer them the chance to find out more about something that they may have a hard time saying no to, offer an appointment.

Are your team following these appointment setting tips?

Contact KONA today for customised training for your business!

click here to contact the KONA Group red button or call 1300 611 288

Sales Performance & Sales Training

Posted on | by Sienna

How to Boost More Revenue Through Strategic Sales Training

sales performance & sales training kona

Do you often perceive sales training as a cost-intensive event? Or that once-in-a-while opportunity where your organisation comes together to try and fix what’s broken?

Instead, what if you saw sales training as –

  • A strategic investment
  • And a proactive exercise that boosts faster and more sales?

Sales Training is a Revenue Generating Activity

If managers are able to make the connection between sales coaching and higher sales performance, then sales training becomes a revenue generating activity, not a ‘dreaded’ cost-intensive event.

Clearly, there is not one sales manager who wouldn’t then agree that sales training or coaching is crucial.

However, a recent survey carried out by Viddler revealed that 147 out of 150 sales executives agreed that “poor sales coaching” was a major weakness of most sales companies.

Another recent survey by Highspot reported that out of 79% of companies who engage in some form of strategic sales enablement process, 64% indicated ‘sales training must be improved.’

Engage in customised sales training to suit their business

Perhaps it’s time for sales managers to begin to reassess their sales enablement programs to ensure they are engaging in a more customised sales training suiting their unique business structure.

They need to take action, measure performance through good constructive feedback, and turn information into action.

Sales managers need to take action

Sales Managers should take inventory of the effectiveness and sales capability of their sales people so that the sales training can be customised to them, and not a generic ‘off the shelf’ course.

Measure performance through good constructive feedback

This can be done by assessing the gaps between where the business is right now and where you want it to be, or by benchmarking against competitors. A number of sales performance metrics can be used to measure as well as improve sales performance and grow revenue.

A few key performance metrics to focus on should include but not limited to:

  • Time spent selling, (to identify and eliminate possible sales blocks)
  • Lead response time (to ensure that your sales people are responding to leads quickly and efficiently).
  • In addition, standard size of a closed deal is also an important metric to help measure and eliminate deals that are not worth pursuing —sometimes sales people prefer to spend time pursuing small deals because they are easier to get.

Turn information into action

The ability to transform information into action that can add value to your business is the crux of business intelligence (BI). The secret to getting actions such as boosting sales, improving customer service skills, and making intelligent decisions, is having the right information.

All the information that you’ve amassed from constructive feedbacks, customer insights, sales training programs and more should be put into action.

This quote from biomedical informatics and biotechnology entrepreneur, Atul Butte, just about sums it: “Hiding within those mounds of data is knowledge that could change the life of a patient, [business] or change the world.”

KONA Group runs a series of different training programs:  sales training, sales management training; call centre training; customer service training and more — all customised to YOUR strategy, YOUR industry, YOUR people, YOUR customers, YOUR outcomes and results.

Contact KONA Group on 1300 611 288 or email info@kona.com.au to discuss how you can improve your business results.

Contact Us

7 Effective Strategies to Close Deals Faster (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna
The probability of closing the deal with your prospects always changes based on their current needs and trends in the market. Securing their purchase amidst their ever-changing preferences will require you to update your sales strategy from time to time, and to have a capable sales team that can quickly determine the exact needs and wants of your customers. Closing the deal in a fast manner sounds very intimidating, but once you master the art of assertiveness without being rude or arrogant, having a closed deal will be like bread and butter. In this infographic, we will discuss the different effective sales strategies that you can use when closing a deal faster. Here 7 critical pointers that you should consider. 7 Effective Strategies to Close Deals Faster - Infographic

Do Your Team’s Presentations Turn Off Your Customers?

Posted on | by Sienna
In business, some problems are more peculiar than others, and often the cause of such issues is easily fixed, but not always easy to detect. At least this was what one of our sales training specialists found with a client we worked with last year A leading national consumer goods distributor was able to open-up an unfocused problem that a company suffers from their sales team. Their sales team seemed to have success with small clients but were unable to win many big accounts. As a result, most of their sales were from small clients, and their cost of sales was rising. The senior management had completed a cause and effect analysis, but the root cause still eluded them. Based on this they asked our sales training specialists for an ‘outsider’s eye’ to review their whole sales process to get to the root of the problem. This assessment made things crystal clear, and we found that apart from inferior questioning skills, they had missed something elementary: poor presentation skills. As was the norm of this industry, big clients were given a presentation as part of the initial sales pitch. A good impression meant an opportunity to take the bid further; a poor presentation prematurely ended the chance.    With this experience of having dilemmas acquiring sales, we have come up with the prominent outcomes that a company can suffer from.

What happens when this is the case?

  •    Full potentialities cannot be realised – Even if they are 100% loyal to your business, small clients can provide you with only so much activity. If your portfolio doesn’t include a mix of large and small clients, your costs of sales and supply will continue to escalate, and profits diminish.
  •    Poor presentation skills lead to poor conversion rates – Hard as your sales team tries, if they fail to break into big accounts, slowly but surely their confidence starts to erode. So much so that they lose hope of converting a more significant opportunity and continue to spend their time with smaller accounts. This, in turn, becomes a decreasing spiral of missed sales opportunities and declining margins.   
  •    Fewer opportunities to grow – Employees fail to move ahead professionally as career opportunities in a stagnant or slow-growing company become few and far between.
In doing this in-depth study about how sales team acquires sales, detecting the problem is not only the remedy that we can get but also, how to avoid and solve sales problems when they arise.

How to solve this issue?

A turnaround is possible, mainly if you use professional and experienced sales training specialists to guide you. In this case, solving the issue was more comfortable than finding it. We introduced a customised sales training course in Sydney and Melbourne, tailored to their business, customers and products, (not an off the shelf, by the standard course’). These ‘In-house’ professional sales training courses helped their team to learn and master the necessary presentation skills to improve sales, which, while not difficult to determine and master, their importance had been taken far too lightly. Excellent presentation skills not only position your team professionally but also show your customers what you can do for them, relative to their specific needs Contact KONA today on 1300 611 288 or Glenn@KONA.com.au to discuss how Hearts and Minds™ Selling will help your sales team achieve their KPIs.

Always Be Closing: 7 Strategies to Close the Sale

Posted on | by Sienna
Closing a sale is considered the most critical step in the sales process. But as mentioned in the previous article about why your sales are dropping, many salespeople often fail at this stage, most often because they follow an ineffective sales pipeline, and because they lack the proper sales training to support their sales objectives. While closing a sale can be quite intimidating, equipping your salespeople with techniques based on deeply invested and well-researched sales plans will significantly increase their chance of closing more deals. To help you get started, we listed seven sales closing techniques that can make sure your sales wins grow more prominent on the long-term process.
  1. Summary Close – Customers like to visualize the benefits they can gain from the purchase long before they actually make a decision. By summarising the different benefits that your customer will be receiving, you are essentially giving them a clear picture of what items and guarantees will they be experiencing to use out of the deal.
  2. Question Close – This technique utilizes probing questions which can help the sales person identify if they are negotiating with a prospect or a suspect. By asking a series of probing questions such as “Am I offering a solution that can address your needs?”, you may be able to discover if that person is sold on your product, or yet, identify any potential objections that they you want to address before they make a final decision.
  3. Now or Never – Aggressive selling tactics are one of the most highly effective sales strategies wherein a sales person makes a time-bound or irresistible offer to close a sale. This technique is effective to use for customers who have not decided yet whether they should purchase or not because this shows the sense of urgency.
  4. Assumptive Close – Assumptive close, as the name implies is a technique where a sales person assumes that the prospect is going to buy the product or avail the service. The trick behind this technique is that it shows your confidence about your offering and its suitability to your customer’s unique needs. When a customer feels that they are being helped with a confident sales professional that understands them, they are more likely to show resistance and follow the lead of that sales professional.
  5. Extra Incentive – Closing a deal is sometimes a matter of giving additional incentives to your potential customers. A free trial or complimentary service will not only give the customer a sense of urgency to avail the free offer when it is near its expiration, but it will also help you gain more leads as people love to receive free items from their purchase – regardless of the product or service it is.
  6. Take Away Close – This particular sales technique adapts to the psychological practice on how children are attached to toys to purchase, but, parents disapprove to be bought. In this technique, a significant feature of the product or service is removed in exchange for a discounted price. By doing so, the customer will think if the discount is really worth getting for that special feature they will be choose not to avail.
  7. Opinion/Suggestion Close – When you’re in the closing stages of a sale, one challenge you might encounter is conveying to your client the value of your product or service. The ability to gauge their interest by showing your personal preference and opinion about the item will ensure trust and good sales interaction and purchase to customers.
Contact KONA Customised Training and Consulting today to let your sales team be trained and exposed to different effective strategies to close the sale.

7 Reasons Why Your Sales Are Dropping

Posted on | by Sienna
Is your business experiencing a drop in sales?

Sales promotions are one of the reasons why businesses operate and acquire more leads.

But while the term sounds easy on the ears, sales promotions actually involve a high level of strategy and psychology that even the most prominent brands sometimes get wrong.

Salespeople are always creating a better plan comparing different statistics with the previous results of operations, but at times, this amount of data is not enough to situate an appropriate sales plan for a specific target.

Every salesperson fears to drop their sales because of factors that make their plans and strategy lack.

In the specific occurrence of events, we cannot control everything, let alone change itself. However, learning how to develop and adapt backup plans is effective when things go wrong with your sales.

There are a lot of factors that affect sales dropping in your business; this varies from hiring employees that have no proper training, missed competitor campaigns, the unclear input of internal and external sales, etc. But, the real question is, why does your business experience a sales drop?

Ineffective Sales Pipeline Management

Managing your sales pipeline starts with estimating incoming cash flow by looking at the analytics for existing leads and sales opportunities.

Yet, some brands fail to use useful analytics to track key metrics on how successful deals take place and how the overall pipeline growth takes place. I

Ineffective sales pipeline management can lead you to miss leads that are nearly closing to a sale, or pursue suspects that neither need your solution nor fit for your business.

Unclear Communication

Some people only listen with the intention to hear, but not with the purpose of understanding.

It is essential to have a productive relationship between different teams that handle sales to make a strategic plan to maximise sales performance.

But at times, some teams cannot show cohesiveness, resulting to a loss of sales, and being unprepared for advertising campaigns.

Lack of Sales Follow-up

Every lead that you will get during sales campaigns should be followed-up as they move through the sales pipeline.

Some companies forget to check with their leads because of the different considerations when campaigns started, but this is not a reason why you should not check yours.

According to a research, lack of sales follow-up can be costly – upwards of 10% more in revenue lost per year.

Ineffective Forecasting

Some sales representatives are too pressured with the sales drop that their campaign had experienced, and this results in changing and guessing the real data between your wins and losses.

It is best to use historical data and the right metrics to extrapolate the results of your quarterly outputs; being truthful with every detail that is enclosed with your report will give your company more accurate insight on how to adjust and create more strategic plans.

Overlooking Competition

When it comes to handling sales properly, no one is ever entitled to be comfortable, just because their leads are increasing.

Being competitive with your sales shows how dedicated and advanced your company is when it comes to performing the right strategy and plan for your consumers.

Competing brands are also stepping up their game by doing thorough research about their consumers and how they can market their brand while adapting to different trends.

If you’re not aware of what your major competitors are doing, you’re flying blind.

Look to see whether your competitors have seen an increase in sales, while you’re experiencing a decrease.

Insufficient Sales Training

The salespeople that are aware of their clients’ strategies will better focus their sales efforts; this includes DNA-ing the client.

Companies who intend to survive for the long haul should invest in sales coaching that will further improve their competency in attracting new customers and closing more leads.

Lack of Motivation

Incentives and rewards are effective motivational tools that many companies still do not use to boost their sales performance.

Motivation creates a healthy environment which then creates good outcomes resulting in the sales increase. Do not take for granted the hardships of your salespeople; it is best to practice fair treatment in every win that every person acquires for the company.

KONA Group

1300 611 288

To discuss how we can help you to improve your organisation’s results.

Contact Us

How to Sell Value Instead of Price (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna
Customers are willing to pay more for products and services that guarantees them significant value. Most companies, at times, are presenting their products right away without even knowing if they are really engaging with their customers. One might say that every product is just the same as the other, and it only differs with its price range; but, have you thought about how buyers also have different needs and point of view towards products? How to Sell Value Instead of Price - Infographic

Top Sales Trends in 2018

Posted on | by Sienna
Q4 has already started, and this means that we are only a few months away from 2019. Some of our clients have created a full sales strategy for this year, however different positive and negative implications have already taken place and key lessons learned – which is why businesses should adapt to the everchanging consumer purchasing habits and develop new techniques to be effective. For salespeople, it is important to blend in with the different trends that resonates with customers. Trends depicts how products and services should move and innovate because the sole reason why these are created is for the consumer’s benefit. Given that most companies are using technology to acquire further knowledge about buyer behaviours and the future of sales roles, there is no doubt that sales trends are also advancing with the use of automation programs. In this article, we will look at the different sales trends in 2018. Here are common business strategies:
  1. The Personalisation of Sales – One of the top sales trends this 2018 is personalisation. According to Accenture’s personalisation pulse check this 2018, about 2 in 3 consumers are more likely to purchase from a retailer if it sends them promotions that are relevant and personalised. Since the digital age has a huge impact when it comes to making a natural marketing communication through consumers, businesses can easily create humanise content for consumers using modern technology to convey goals.
  2. Using Artificial Intelligence and Automation for Sales – AI and automation saves the staff time when it comes to collecting data, which means less time answering calls and more time on more essential tasks and initiatives such developing new selling techniques, conducting sales performance analysis, and sales coaching to client-facing employees.
  3. Structured Sales Influenced by Millennials – Companies today are hiring more and more Millennial people. Marketers who succeed in handling their sales will proactively assess the impact millennials may have on their market from a macroeconomic perspective and as social influencers, which could affect bottom line campaign results.
  4. A Call for More Efficient Leads Management – More advanced sales and leads platforms are created to enable companies respond to every potential customer’s concerns as quickly as possible. However, many businesses are yet to fully realise the potential of these solutions in their sales operations. In fact, a recent Harvard Business Review study revealed that a large portion of companies are slow to respond to their potential customers; 24% of 2,241 U.S companies took more than 24 hours, and 23% of companies never responded at all.
  5. Account-Based Sales Leveraging Content – Companies are bringing together sales and marketing leaders to create a cohesive strategy to grow key accounts. And in 2018, creating content with the purpose to adapt to the natural behaviour of your consumers and heavily engage on building trust between business to community relationships. In this way, companies’ sales and marketing teams can design a successful campaign by tailoring content to specific consumers along the buyer’s journey.
This sales trend is focused on how buyers’ behaviours are changing with the rise of digital engagement and purchasing decisions, and the impact this is having on sales roles across both B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) channels. If you are looking for a remedy to enable your company to create more sales and leads, KONA can offer you sales training. Contact us today to learn more Sales Management Training program can benefit your business today.