 Track Selling Times - March, 2001
|
********************************************************
Track Selling Times
The Voice of the Sales Profession
Issue No.136
March 1, 2001
Published by Max Sacks International,
Home of 100% Guaranteed World Class Sales Training
Developers of the Track Selling System™.
Author/Editor: Roy Chitwood, President, MSI
********************************************************
********************************************************
Feature:
Sections:
Newsletter Archives
"The Wheel of Activity: Plan your way to success
by Roy E. Chitwood, CSP, CSE |
As the new year's shifting into high gear, I thought it to be appropriate to revisit an effective method for managing and planning your time that can help you achieve a record year and an even more successful sales career.
The method is "The Wheel of Activity."
To balance your personal and professional life in a healthy fashion, imagine your allotment of time in terms of a 'wheel' - a "Wheel of Activity." At the hub of your wheel is planning.
Planning is the most vital aspect of every salesperson's day.
By planning, I mean how you're going to use each precious hour of your time. From planning the objectives of every sales call to what you're going to read on a particular to day to further your professional mind.
As the famous quote states, "Chance favors the prepared mind."
To compliment the hub of planning, your Wheel of Activity has five spokes, with the first being "prospecting." I know prospecting isn't the most enjoyable activity for most salespeople and I'm not going to attempt to convert you to love the process. I will tell you, however, that without many prospects you won't have many customers. Therefore, it's important to have a routine in place for prospecting such as an hour set aside each morning during which you make 40 cold calls, etc. A large pool of prospects helps ensure future sales.
The second spoke is "selling" as it doesn't do much good to have prospects if you don't follow up. That's the essence of selling: finding the people to sell and selling the people you find. Selling relates directly to the hub of your wheel, planning, as you want to use your golden hours only for selling. Every industry has it's own prime hours. Real estate may be evening and weekends, computer software weekday mornings, etc. Whatever those times are that prospects are most willing to meet with you, spend as much of your time actually selling and shelve less productive tasks, such as proposals and report writing, until later.
"Service" is the third spoke and means: if you don't forget your customers, they won't forget you. Plan time to make service as an ongoing activity, not only immediately after a sale. Closing a sale should be the opening of a relationship and requires ongoing communication and interaction. If you don't regularly interact with your clients between sales, an effective step you can immediately take is to spend 10-15 minutes daily calling one or two customers for the sole reason of seeing how they're doing. These small deposits will yield tremendous future rewards.
The fourth spoke is the "personal" spoke and puts joy and relaxation in your life. When you plan your recreation time much as you do your work time, you'll have more fun and increase your energy. Consider the word "recreation" and its actual meaning. It means re-creation - creating anew your vitality, enthusiasm and interest - and is essential for personal growth.
School's never out for the true sales professional as the more he learns, the more he realizes how little he knows. This makes "study" the fifth and final spoke in the Wheel of Activity. We're living in a rapidly changing world and are inundated with massive amounts of information. In fact, I read a recent prediction that the amount of raw data available via the Internet will triple in only the next five years. This is staggering. Now, you obviously only need worry about a sliver of this information, but it's important that you always keep learning. If the average person committed to reading only fifteen minutes per day, she would read more than 18 books annually. How much more effective could you become by committing yourself to 15 minutes of educational time per day? But it will only happen if you plan the time, which brings us full circle back to the hub in our Wheel of Activity: planning.
The Wheel of Activity is as successful as your discipline: planning your work and working your plan on a regular basis, and doing what it takes to complete the interesting and boring parts of your work. If you commit to using and improving your wheel daily, the results within a few months time will be good, and in a year's time, great. I challenge you to get started today.
To see a graphic representation of the "Wheel of Activity" just click here.
Integrity Pays:
"Full disclosure can sometimes save an account"
by Rick Bennett
|
Rick Bennett is CEO of The MI Group, a New Jersey-based international relocation service that operates through three business streams: Worldscope Relocations, Movers International and MI Relocation Risk Management Services. For more information, please call (201) 866-7940 or visit www.themigroup.com.
"Several years ago, we had a client who wanted everything. This client was very demanding as we dealt only with senior staff. Consequently, our 'marching orders' were to provide truly first-class service, without exception. Whether it was speeding up an already expressed shipment, upgrading an individual to a hotel's nicest suite or ensuring he or she ate at the finest restaurant, it was to be done. For this premium service we charged a premium fee.
The people we served were very pleased with our service and we were routinely rated very highly. Internally, the company had changed our marching orders, however, but failed to tell us. The customer was in cost-cutting mode as it was trying to become more lean and profitable, and management told their employees we were serving that they would no longer receive our premium services as they were costing too much.
Several months after this policy was enacted, I received a call from a purchasing manager who was reviewing a lump-sum invoice we had submitted. He told me that our services were too expensive and that he was opening the contract for bidding among three of our competitors. Shortly thereafter, he called back and told me that the bids he had received were far lower than ours and gave me the opportunity to explain the differences in person.
This was the best scenario that could have happened although I didn't realize it at the time. His mandate gave us an opportunity to fully disclose our fees, line by line, and explain why ours were higher. In one instance, our rate for relocating an executive to Australia was more than 50 percent more than a competitor's. The manager listened, however, as I explained that our quote was for two, forty foot containers that would be shipped directly to Australia and arrive within a week. The competitor's bid was for one forty foot container, and one twenty foot container, that was to first arrive in Singapore, be transferred to another vessel, and then shipped to Australia. This routing took significantly longer, but even more importantly, would require the executive and his family to remain in a five star hotel for two weeks at a rate of $400-500 per night plus room service. Additionally, this executive was already stressed about the move and the sooner he could set up home, the more productive he would become. The competitor forgot to mention this during its bidding.
Once each charge was described in detail, the manager gladly retained our services. In fact, our percentage of this company's business jumped from 50 percent to 90 percent when only months before we were in danger of losing the account because of our premium fees. The lesson we learned is to always practice full disclosure in every contract and on every invoice. Doing so makes absolutely clear the reason for each specific charge and offers opportunities for rapport and trust building every time a client asks for an explanation of a fee. Your positive answer continually sells your company as the best option in the buyer's mind, thereby protecting the longevity of the relationship."
World Class Sales Management:
Coach your team to more sales with the
seven steps of the Track Selling System
by Bob Greene
|
Bob Greene is sales manager for Direct Line Communications based in San Jose, Calif. The company is an authorized direct reseller of Nextel wireless services. Prior to his current position, Bob spent eight years with Nextel and owned his own business during the preceding eight years. For more information, please call Bob at (408) 298-1414.
"Anytime I think about sales management, I think of the seven steps of the Track Selling System. I've been in sales for more than 25 years, have attended dozens of workshops and training programs, and believe, without question, the seven steps provide the most effective selling process I've ever seen. Therefore, I'm continually referring back to them and have internalized Track Selling as my own selling process.
For me, the greatest revelation the process offers is that it provides the proper language and understanding of how to interact with the client throughout the sales cycle. It helps the salesperson make the sale and have the client feel good about their buying decision after the contract's signed.
I've actually made the Track Selling System and its seven steps the basis for all of my new salespeople's training and the core of my weekly meetings. I take the salesperson through each step in the process and dig-in to them deeply through questioning and role-playing over a several week period for hours at a time.
I've learned through my years of managing, however, to have a hard and fast process that doesn't allow for exceptions can be a death-knell. So I do offer a level of flexibility to my salespeople. If an individual's exceeding her numbers and there's a specific way she prefers handling a particular portion of the sales process, that's fine. The only requirement is that it doesn't negatively harm the relationship. For instance, if she were a 'slammer' during the closing step and signed many deals, yet did so only because she over promised, that would be unacceptable.
The role of a sales manager is part motivator, part taskmaster, part psychologist, part overseer and part mentor. And I believe the most important component is that your people truly feel that you're working for them rather than their only having to work for you. You accomplish this by working with each individually and the group collectively to train and guide them instead of only asking for their numbers at month's end."
Focus on the Professional -
"Dr. Anneli Driessen Ph.D., CMS, MCC"
|
Dr. Anneli Driessen Ph.D., CMS, MCC is a Master Certified Coach (MCC) and has had a successful private Counseling and Coaching practice in Victoria, B.C., since 1978. She is also certified in Marketing and Sales (CMS) under the ISO 9000 program and currently coaches CEOs and Executives of larger corporations in several countries. For more information, please call 250-472-0909, email anneli@annelicoach.com or visit www.annelicoach.com.
Why did you first attend the Track Selling SystemTM workshop?
About ten years ago, Roy Chitwood hired me as a consultant to evaluate the presentation of the Track Selling System workshop instructors. With a strong background in adult education, he was looking for any thoughts I could share for improving the quality of the program. I therefore attended several of the programs in different cities, reviewed the various deliveries and prepared a two-page report for each.
During the workshops, however, I learned a tremendous amount of information that could help my own private consulting practice. I was amazed at the depth and quality of the information presented and was very excited about the possibilities it could create in my business. So I decided to attend the program again solely as a student.
What was your greatest learning experience?
The workshop provided a great deal of clarity and purpose for the structure of interpersonal communications. It helped to pull everything together, reach Agreement on Need and decide on the next step with a client.
How has the Track Selling System helped your coaching and counseling practice?
After completing the workshop, I was stunned by how many of its principles and techniques overlapped what I was doing in my counseling practice. I began centering my sessions upon the Track Selling process and put them all on 'track' at a high level. For example, every time I use Step Four: Sell the Company, where I talk about my background and experience for recommending a particular action to address a challenge that a client and I have discussed, I first ensure that we've reached an Agreement on Need that answers whether this is correct. The process has proved invaluable in increasing client satisfaction and retention.
Book Review -
Emotional Intelligence
By Daniel P. Goleman
|
If the person who perennially received straight A's and had a place reserved on the honor roll is today not the highly successful career person most predicted, perhaps it was because his emotional quotient didn't equal his intelligence quotient. This is the theory proposed by Daniel Goleman in his best seller, Emotional Intelligence, and has gained widespread acceptance in the corporate world.
For decades, an individual's IQ, more than any other character trait or quality, was viewed as the single most important predictor of a person's success. In direct contrast to this premise, Goleman uses neurological and behavioral research to propose that a person's "emotional intelligence" is an equal, if not greater, factor. He contends that those individuals who are very successful in both their career and personal relationships have learned to adeptly balance both the emotional and rational sides of their brain. Best of all, because a person's emotional intelligence isn't determined at birth like IQ, adults can learn how to increase this necessary element for success and Goleman offers several steps for doing so.
Emotional Intelligence is an eye-opening book that, at least, will have you consider new possibilities for success, and at most, set you on a course to increase your own emotional intelligence. Whether you're a parent, a professional, or both, this book can compliment your development goals.
| Ask Roy
|
Robert Coggin of Newport News, Virginia asks:
"What's a good way to post-pone discussing the issue of price until the appropriate time despite a prospect's continued asking?"
Roy's Answer:
"
When you do a little digging, you realize this question is pretty easy to handle most of the time. That's because it's a natural response - and defense mechanism - for a buyer to ask the question very early in the sales cycle. Typically you haven't delved deeply into the qualification process and therefore are uncertain as to what the prospect needs. A good answer to use in most instances is one similar to, "I'd be happy to discuss the price with you. However, I can't quote you a price until I know what it is exactly that you need. Once we agree on this, I'll be happy to share the price." Doing so not only postpones the discussion until the right time, but more importantly, proves to your client that you're trying to learn and meet his needs rather than just sell something.
"
(For more information on a guaranteed process for closing sales, please call us at (800) 488-4629.
| Reader Survey
|
1. What do you think of Track Selling Times?
2. What else would you like to see included?
3. If you have sales questions for Roy, or know of a salesperson, sales manager or integrity story that should be featured in Track Selling Times, mail it
to:
The Editor, Track Selling Times
c/o Max Sacks International
2442 NW Market Street #409
Seattle
WA 98107
Tel: (206) 706-4119 Fax: (206) 706-5359
**************************************************************
Our products and services help our clients increase sales, improve profit
margins, reduce sales cycles and build stronger partnerships with their
customers.
To learn more about our Track Selling System and how we can help you, please call (800) 488-4629.
Archives of this Newsletter are available at
http://www.maxsacks.com/newsletter.html
