Author: Katie Coalson

Make Your Sales Kickoff Count this Year

It’s that time of the year again where everyone is starting to plan the new year’s sales kickoff(SKO). You’ve got new goals to make, product updates to launch, and new sales processes to explain. You might be asking, “What do my reps really want out of this year’s kickoff?” “Do we even need to have a SKO this year?” “How can we make it enjoyable and keep the team engaged while also being productive?”

If you make your SKO one big celebratory party, you are missing out on an opportunity to jump start new sales strategies and have a fresh perspective for the new year. If you keep it too serious and have meeting after meeting, your reps won’t be engaged and will most likely forget what they are learning. There is a healthy in-between where you can spend some days on training and others on celebrating the past year’s success.

Why It’s Important

When looking at the training days, there’s one area that needs serious attention. According to Forrester Research, while 88% of key decision makers feel that salespeople can speak knowledgeably about their own products and services, only 24% feel like they understand their business needs. Even worse, only 15% believe their meetings or calls with salespeople are valuable.

The consequence results in focusing too much on products and services and not enough on the business outcomes prospects and customers expect. With that as a backdrop, it’s important to equip everyone for the next year, with clear goals and a solid understanding of your business and how to have valuable sales conversations.

Hiring a Sales Trainer

One way to mix things up is to hire an outside sales trainer for a day-long workshop. Sometimes it can be hard to get through to your reps when teaching new concepts if you’ve been the one training and managing them all year. An outside perspective and authority can help them absorb concepts that they may not have been open to hearing previously.

What to Look For

When talking with other sales leaders about the goals of their sales training events or annual meetings, we hear that they want their reps to engage with the content and walk away equipped with skills to lift their sales performance.

However, sometimes outside resources are brought that have a “flavor of the month” approach that is viewed with skepticism and often unhelpful. The result is ultimately a waste of their team’s precious selling time and a missed opportunity to impact revenue.

You need a sales trainer that teaches relevant content that is tailored to your reps and company. Salespeople are always looking for fresh, relevant content and techniques. The content the sales trainer goes over needs to be interesting and backed up by current, up to date research.

If you want all of your reps to be engaged, the training also needs to be accommodating to diverse sales roles and experience levels. Refract explains that a sales kickoff workforce presents you with a mixed-ability challenge: “Fresh-hired rookies need firm direction and careful monitoring; struggling reps need careful evaluation to determine areas for development together with incremental targets; and your star performers need acknowledgment of their success, encouragement to contribute their insights and take on ‘buddy’ roles, and as much help as you can give to remove any barriers which inhibit further performance.”

You want to make sure that your reps, from the most inexperienced to the most tenured, not only connect with the content, but adopt the skills necessary to meet your future revenue goals. The key is to partner with a sales training firm that understands recent discoveries in behavioral psychology and leverages techniques proven to help prospects see maximum value.

We’ve also found that learning to do something is better than learning about something. According to Forrester, practicing a presentation, learning a whiteboard, or anything that involves doing something and receiving feedback about it will have a much longer-lasting effect than passively listening to a speaker.

After the Event

Imagine that you have had a great kickoff where your team has learned valuable sales techniques and are ready to put them to use in the next year. The unfortunate part about training is that it’s human nature to forget a portion of what you’ve learned. So how do you make sure it is reinforced and your team is able to continue to utilize the concepts they’ve learned?

CSO Insights suggests that sales training events need to be connected by a continuous stream of interventions that extend, expand and sustain learning. This can be accomplished by short bursts of learning aligned to assessed gaps.

Microlearning is a bite-size training technique that helps sales teams increase their expertise and sales performance. It helps with memory, is interesting and intriguing, and is structured and consistent. Any time you teach something new, microlearning is a great way to make sure the concept is being reinforced. We’ve enjoyed using a program called Qstream to quiz sales teams on the content that they learn during our workshops.

Your next sales kickoff is an opportunity to reunite your team and teach valuable techniques that will help you stand out in the marketplace. Investing in a SKO and hiring a sales trainer shows your reps that you’ve got their backs and want them to excel. What are your goals for this year’s kickoff?

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If you have a training date on your upcoming calendar, we would love the opportunity to be a part of the discussion on how we can partner together to help you and your team achieve your goals. The content of our training workshops is taught by a 35-year sales veteran who specializes in elevating value by understanding the science of decision-making. Every rep will walk away with mastery of a conversation framework scientifically proven to communicate high value in every conversation they have with prospects and customers.

Let’s talk.

Call: 678-561-6260, Email: dkurkjian@mastermessaging.com or instant message David Kurkjian on LinkedIn to start the conversation.

Why Your New Hires aren’t Succeeding

Across all firms, new hire salespeople make up 10% of the average headcount in a company. According to a salesperson on-boarding study by the Sales Management Association, only 55% of these salespeople are successful 24 months from hire. What’s going wrong?

Research shows that only slightly more than half of firms have a defined onboarding program for new hire salespeople, and only 6 in 10 salespeople are onboarded as part of a formal program. Just 38% of these firms consider their salesperson onboarding effective. It can be difficult as a sales leader to get new salespeople up to date on the industry knowledge and your unique sales messaging and strategies.

Not having a solid onboarding system in place takes a toll not only on the new hires, but the managers as well. It takes a new hire about 11 months to ramp up to full productivity, and in that time managers have a hard time seeing if this person is a right fit for the company and if they’ll be successful long-term. Companies have to pay 100% when they aren’t receiving full productivity and end up with longer employee churn cycles. It’s an expensive cycle that a solid onboarding process can fix.

Creating an On-boarding Process

The two most important components of an on-boarding process are structure and consistency. Programs with both attributes – structure and consistent application – correlate with on-boarding program effectiveness 40% greater than other firms’. According to the study, Firms whose on-boarding has neither characteristic are 38% less effective.

LMS

Online Learning Management Systems(LMS) can be used as an e-learning training experience for your new hires. LMS is helpful because you can store all of your training materials in one place, it reduces learning and development costs, and you can track progress and performance.

We used a LMS program called Kajabi to develop an online video course for our clients’ new hires and sales teams to teach them important sales techniques. The opportunities are endless for LMS, and it creates a consistent program that all of your sales team can go through at any time.

Sales Playbook

It’s important to provide consistent sales messaging to all of your sales team, whether they are old hires or new. A great way to do this is by creating a sales messaging playbook. This playbook would provide a series of conversations and supporting content, mapped to each stage of the buyer’s journey (sales process). If your company’s sales team consistently follows this messaging, they will be able to close deals quicker, increase your margins, and expand opportunities with existing clients.

One of the key areas that all new reps could greatly benefit from in your playbook should be an expansive and in depth buyer profile. All new reps should understand the world of their prospects as thoroughly as possible. They need to know what their prospects are trying to accomplish (goals), what is keeping them from realizing those goals (challenges) and finally, how the product or service they are selling uniquely helps their prospect overcome their challenge and achieve their goals.

It would also really benefit new hires to be able to have all of your sales messaging and content in one place when they’re just starting out. If they are challenged with a situation they aren’t prepared for, the playbook would be a great resource that they can reference.

Microlearning

Microlearning is a bite-size training technique that helps sales teams increase their expertise and sales performance. It helps with memory, is interesting and intriguing, and is structured and consistent. You can create a microlearning program that your sales team goes through and then enroll new hires as they come on to complete it as well. This ensures that everyone on your team is on the same page and has had the same level of training.

If you’ve created a sales messaging playbook, this is what you’d want to focus your microlearning program on. We love using a program called Qstream, which is a sales performance platform that quizzes your team on your sales training content. The great thing about a program like Qstream is that the team can answer questions and move at their own pace, and then the manager gets access to the results.

This is a great way to monitor how a new hire is performing and if they need some extra help understanding a concept. Imagine being able to pinpoint exactly where a new hire is struggling and quickly correcting and improving their performance. This can easily change the statistic of the 55% new hire success rate.

Structure and Consistency

Adding LMS, a Sales Playbook and a Microlearning program to your training process provides a structure that is consistent for everyone on your team. You can train new hires quickly and efficiently, all while tracking their progress to see if they are the right fit for your company. Firms with effective on-boarding have a new salesperson success rate of 65% after 24 months, compared with 49% for firms with ineffective on-boarding. How successful is your on-boarding process?

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We understand that it can be difficult to know where to start when developing content for your training process. That’s why we’ve created a Sales Conversation Roadmap “Cheat Sheet” that you can download here.

Please leave your feedback in the comments section.

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Most business owners have no extra time to devote to sales coaching. This is where MasterMessaging steps in and excels. We optimize your sales teams’ conversion rates, your lead volume, or both for less than the costs of a single administrative hire. The impact on your sales is significant and sustainable, continuing for years with no ongoing costs.

Our custom messaging solutions are strategically scripted, cadenced, and executed to increase conversion rates for maximum impact on your company’s revenue and profits. If needed we can also increase lead volume. Our system fits seamlessly with your existing sales process to ensure successful adoption & smooth rollout throughout your entire organization. Our solutions are high impact, low risk, minimally invasive, and integrate into your existing sales efforts.

Call: 678-561-6260, Email: dkurkjian@mastermessaging.com or instant message David Kurkjian on LinkedIn to start the conversation.

2 Levers to Lift Revenue

Increasing revenue and profitability may be difficult but are not complicated.

The simplest approach with the least risk involves elevating conversion rates, lead volume, or both without increasing your sales costs.

By elevating conversion rates, lead volume, or both without increasing costs of selling, revenue and profits quickly grow. The simplicity can get lost in the haze of the latest, greatest business metrics. You simply need to close more sales while maintaining costs by:

  1. Converting prospects to customers at a higher rate
  2. Reaching more prospects
  3. Not adding additional salaries or solution subscription costs

Volumes have been written on keeping costs under control and that isn’t the focus of this article. We’ll focus this article on proven strategies that lift lead volume and conversion rates in the sales cycle.

INCREASING LEAD VOLUME

There are many ways to increase lead volume, and the experts agree that a holistic, multi pronged approach works best. Organizations today that generate significant lead volume are doing so through a variety of means, platforms and approaches that include:

  • Cold calling campaigns (phone)
  • Email campaigns (automated cadences/sequences)
  • Video campaigns (Vidyard/Videolicious)
  • Social interaction (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)
  • Contact Campaigns (3D objects delivered to your prospect)

The verdict is in:

Phone prospecting ONLY isn’t as effective as a “combo” approach that includes phone, email and social.

Phone prospecting ONLY isn’t as effective as a “combo” approach that includes phone, email and social. (Like the one encouraged by Tony Hughes, in his book Combo Prospecting). Sophisticated sales teams are using any number of combinations to get their prospects to take that initial call,  and it’s now taking 7-13 “touches” to get your prospect to say yes to a first meeting.

Sales leaders like John Barrows speak to the structure and format of these outreaches in depth, and Chris Orlob and the team at Gong.io have released some incredible insights that speak to what’s working and NOT working in outbound outreach.

Our approach is similar and starts with an in-depth understanding of your Ideal Client Profile (ICP). Specifically, start by finding out what they are trying to accomplish (goals) and what they are challenged with (challenges).

Then, detail how your prospect can overcome their specific challenges and achieve their goals uniquely through your product/service.

Outreach attempts fail when they are product or feature focused instead of client focused.Long, boring bulleted emails about your product specs or run-on voicemails that detail how long you’ve been in business rarely get a client to say “Yes” to a first meeting.Outreach attempts fail when they are product or feature focused instead of client focused.

Part of this is due to the proliferation of powerful sales and marketing automation tools and the ease of which sales development professionals can “spam” huge lists with templated emails and voice messages. Don’t get me wrong, tools like Outreach and Hubspot are amazing, but as Spider Man learned, “With great power, comes great responsibility”.

Business development reps are learning that a personalized approach to outreach nets more initial meetings than simply blasting a contact list with vague generalizations. Companies like Drift have developed incredible capabilities around a new approach to sales they call “Conversational Marketing”. Put simply, make it easy for your buyer to get the information they need to purchase, on their own.

A POWERFUL LIST-BUILDING COMBO

We and several of our clients have benefitted from a very targeted approach to increasing lead volume using little more than LinkedIn Navigator and a contact info grabbing tool like LeadIQ. The way to leverage these tools in your outreach is simple:

  1. Build a targeted list in LinkedIn Navigator
  2. Gather their contact info using LeadIQ

LinkedIn Navigator allows you to hyper segment your outreach by Geography, Industry, Employee count and Title/Persona. Mix that with a solid boolean search for titles and you get a very detailed list of the contacts most likely to do business with you.

Save that search and then use LeadIQ to gather contact data including work/personal emails as well as work/personal phone info. Now, you’ve got everything you need to target your ICP with a multi touch campaign that utilizes phone, email and social platforms.

Then, create phone, voicemail and email scripts that highlight the BENEFIT your prospect will receive as a result of doing business with you. Use case studies and customer testimonial to paint a picture of what your prospect can expect by engaging you and prospects will respond.

Use case studies and customer testimonial to paint a picture of what your prospect can expect by engaging you and prospects will respond.

Keep the volume of information low, but highlight the value of your product/service using a contrasting worldview in every communication you have with your prospects (this is your world WITHOUT our product immediately contrasted with this is your world WITH our product).

INCREASING LEAD CONVERSION RATES

If you had to make a choice between increasing lead volume or lead conversion, what would you choose? Certainly, with more opportunities to sell, you could impact revenue by increasing lead volume… right?

Not so fast.

If your conversion rates are low and you have difficulty converting your ICP to a paying customer, take a step back and look at your conversion rates.

You can identify your conversion rates at each stage of your sales process in your CRM by implementing a strategy like the one advocated here using Salesforce.

If outreach to your ICP is targeted like the one encouraged above, there is no reason to have low conversion rates. They have a problem, and you can solve it. If you faithfully communicate value at every step of the sales process, you should be converting many of them to customers!

HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

More often than not, sales teams with low conversion rates have them because they employ an outdated inquisition style approach early in their discovery process or they are “winging it” on that first call. Typically their sales conversations are heavy on company info (how long we’ve been in business, who we work with, etc.) or product features (long winded, boring technical demos)

HOT TIP: Your ICP doesn’t care about your company or product. They ONLY care about what your company/product can do for THEM. They enter into every sales conversation silently asking the question, “What’s in it for ME?” If you don’t directly answer that question, it’s no wonder your conversion rates are low.

Your ICP doesn’t care about your company or product. They ONLY care about what your company/product can do for THEM.

Sales teams that articulate VALUE do so by religiously communicating how your prospect will be better off as a result of using their product/service.And this is the primary reason so many great sales organizations with great products and services struggle to lift their conversion rates: Crafting a conversation that communicates high value from your prospect’s point of view TAKES TIME.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

You have to build a conversation for every persona you are selling to. Your product/service doesn’t change, but what it means is completely different to each persona you speak with.

If you are selling to a CEO, a conversation about ease of use will mean almost nothing. Likewise, if you are talking to an end user, focusing the conversation exclusively around capturing market share or increasing shareholder value will totally go over their head.

Build a conversation that connects with your target persona using these steps:

  1. What are they trying to achieve? (Goals)
  2. What challenges do they face that keep them from their goals? (Challenges)
  3. How can you uniquely help them overcome their challenges to achieve their goals? (Uniqueness)

This is WHY they should engage you. Then, and only then are you free to talk about HOW your product/service works and WHO it has worked for in the past.

Think about it from your prospect’s point of view: Why would they care what your product can do if they aren’t convinced that it can help THEM? Some of the best tools on the market won’t work for me based on our company size. It doesn’t matter how good that product works if they don’t have an offering for small sales teams!

HERE’S THE GOOD NEWS

By leveraging these techniques to increase lead volume, you’ll get more opportunities to sell. By leveraging these techniques to increase lead conversion rates, more of your prospects will convert to paying customers.

The effect?

LIFTING REVENUE. Which is really the name of the game, isn’t it?

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I would love to hear your feedback! Please like, share & comment.

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Most business owners have no extra time to devote to sales coaching. This is where MasterMessaging steps in and excels. We optimize your sales teams’ conversion rates, your lead volume, or both for less than the costs of a single administrative hire. The impact on your sales is significant and sustainable, continuing for years with no ongoing costs. 

Our custom messaging solutions are strategically scripted, cadenced, and executed to increase conversion rates for maximum impact on your company’s revenue and profits. If needed we can also increase lead volume. Our system fits seamlessly with your existing sales process to ensure successful adoption & smooth rollout throughout your entire organization. Our solutions are high impact, low risk, minimally invasive, and integrate into your existing sales efforts. 

Call: 678-561-6260, Email: dkurkjian@mastermessaging.com or instant message David Kurkjian on LinkedIn to start the conversation.