• You are heavily invested in a sales campaign that has stalled and you don’t know why
• You acquired a new account and you’re unaware of their priorities and challenges
• There are no executive relationships to speak of
• Your company is considered an unknown entity
• Your product provides a partial solution to your customers problem
• Your customer has had a bad experience with your company.

Without help, even the most experienced and successful sales executives will take a very long time trying to overcome these serious issues. One of the smartest sales techniques you can use to rapidly address these problems is to engage a partner that already works with your customer. The most strategic and lucrative sales I have personally closed, have been with partners that helped me in a variety of very valuable ways. For clarity, the term “partners” refers to other organizations that have an established and mutually beneficial relationship with your company, knowledge of the key products you sell, and where together you provide a stronger solution that’s more valuable for your customer than what can be provided individually.

Many sales executives are reluctant to work with partners because they fear it will slow down and complicate their sales campaigns. There was a time where I believed that too and was also afraid to relinquish any control, especially to someone outside of my own company. However, what I discovered is that working with partners accelerates your sales campaigns and helps you to substantially increase your sales. Here’s how.

Many businesses rely on third parties for help on critical projects where they lack in-house expertise. When one of your partners provides these crucial services, they can help you out in a big way. The first thing you must do is find out which partners work with your customers. Meet with them to determine the projects they are working on, the relationships they have, and how your products or services can help them be more successful while solving your customers particular problem. Because they already work with your customer on vital initiatives, there’s a pretty good chance they’ve built executive relationships that would likely take you years to develop. They’re going to know the key players and decision makers, will be aware of the political climate, and can also be a very credible and unbiased resource to recommend and positively influence the sale to your customer. Once you and your partner determine how your combined solution can help out your customer, you can develop and execute a joint sales strategy.

As you can tell, working with partners that endorse your products is an excellent way to overcome your major obstacles and increase your overall sales performance. Once you leverage the relationships, credibility, and established success of your partners, you will provide better solutions to your customers while accelerating and maximizing your sales.

If you’ve have had an experience where a partner helped you in your business, please share it by posting a comment below.

I was blown away at the question and the awkward silence that followed. How could my manager have the nerve to come right out and ask such a direct question? At that time, I certainly didn’t. It was obvious that he had done this many times before and had no issue whatsoever asking for their business. I was also shocked that my customer didn’t mind at all, and in fact proceeded to tell us the process they needed to go through to finalize our agreement by the end of the month. I instantly learned that in order to be successful in sales, I needed to be able to ask for the order.

It’s such a simple concept and sales technique, and yet many sales people are reluctant to ask for the order for a variety of reasons. They may be afraid of rejection, or are not confident in themselves or what they have done during the sales campaign. Perhaps they don’t want to be perceived as being pushy, or they are inexperienced and don’t know how or what to say. One thing’s for sure, truly successful sales people are NOT afraid to ask for the order. From my personal experience, I have seen that many sales campaigns falter or fail simply because the sales rep does not ask.

Why Should You Ask For The Order?

• Your customer may already be familiar with your product and wants and needs to purchase it.
• You can shave substantial time off your sales campaign by asking early.
• You will quickly identify objections and the obstacles you need to overcome in order to close your deal.
• If you don’t, you substantially reduce your chances of being successful, and will prolong your sales cycle indefinitely, and your customers will continue to ask you to perform time consuming and resource intensive tasks.

When Is The Right Time To Ask?

If done properly, and you have built credibility with your prospect by demonstrating value, it’s never too early to ask. However, there are certain logical times when you need to just do it:

• When you have identified a specific need or compelling event and your customer needs your product or solution.
• When you have met your customers business objectives.
• At the end of your sales campaign when you have presented your proposal.
• After completing a product trial.
• When you finish a sales presentation or product demonstration.

How Should You Ask?

Everyone has their own style and I have found that most executives appreciate a sincere and direct approach. If you are confident in your solution and the value it will provide, you should say so and ask for the business. A direct approach might go something like this. “Mr. Customer, our team has been working with yours over the last two months, and have proven that our solution addresses your major requirements. In order to meet your deadline and begin the project, we will need to have a contract signed this month. Will you be able to ensure that we get our agreement signed before the 30th?” A more subtle approach might be to casually ask “can we move ahead and prepare and forward you the paperwork?” Every situation is different, so you will need to tailor your question appropriately.

Who Should You Ask?

It’s always wise to ask for the business from decision makers and those executives empowered to purchase your products or solutions. If you ask someone that has no authority to approve your purchase, you can waste valuable time chasing deals that will never happen. Most senior executives will give you an honest answer and you will know where you stand and what you need to do to close your deal. It’s critical that you know who these people are at the beginning of your sales campaign to avoid wasting precious time.

As you can see, asking for the business early and often provides many benefits to increase your sales and accelerate your sales campaigns. It’s crucial that you don’t forget that your time is very valuable, and your customer has a problem that your solution can solve for them. If you have invested your time with your customer, built credibility, and demonstrated value during the sales process, then you have EARNED the right to ASK FOR THE ORDER! Now, it’s up to you. I challenge you to ask one of your customers today.

If you have other good examples of how you have asked for the order, or other sales techniques you can share, please put them in a comment after this post.

1. Adapt And Leverage The Strengths Of Each Team Member. It’s important for you to understand your reps unique skills, strengths, weaknesses, and what motivates them. To be effective, you need to adapt your management style to the needs of each individual and should not make the mistake of trying to manage or coach everyone in the same way.
2. Set Realistic Sales Goals. Make sure the sales goals you set are challenging, measurable, and attainable, and hold your reps accountable for achieving them. The financial incentives available for reaching sales goals, and even those tied to specific deals, should be crystal clear.
3. Lead By Example. Top sales managers earn the most trust and respect from their reps by rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty. Work closely with the reps on your team that need the most help and you will increase your sales performance. Whenever practical, have your more successful and senior reps mentor your junior ones. 
4. Share And Celebrate Successes. One of the best ways to motivate your team while sharing valuable sales techniques is to have your reps present their most strategic wins to the rest of your team. By doing so, everyone will learn firsthand how their peers overcame difficult obstacles to close their best deals. It’s very likely that your other sales reps are having similar challenges with their own opportunities and will benefit from the experience and success of others.
5. Provide Honest And Constructive Feedback. The best sales managers I’ve worked with were the ones that I learned the most from and those that provided prompt and constructive feedback. Make sure you point out and reinforce the positive behaviors while also suggesting changes in the areas your reps can improve upon. A well balanced discussion will be appreciated.
6. Reward Your Top Performers. Rewards can be provided in many ways and it’s no surprise that most people in sales are in it for the money. Find ways to acknowledge the success of the individuals on your team and most importantly give credit where it’s due. One of the best sales managers I ever had, used to march us into our CEO’s office after we closed a large deal and share our win with them right on the spot. It was a great feeling to be recognized in that way, and although that approach may not always be possible, you should get creative rewarding outstanding performance.
7. Assemble The Best Team You Can. Your success is measured by the overall performance of your team, and it’s up to you to be sure you have the very best people supporting and selling to your customers at all times. If there are individuals that consistently under-perform no matter what you do, cut your losses and hire someone new to replace them. 
8. Connect With Your Customers. Engaging directly with your customers is essential to building your own relationships and will help you grow your business. Additionally, it will enable you to assist your reps with their key deals and overcoming the obstacles they face.
9. Stay Positive. Negative attitudes and actions are extremely contagious. By focusing your conversations on solutions instead of only the problems, you will see the behavior of your team change in a very positive way. Counter a discussion focused solely on challenges with productive questions geared towards solutions.
10. Have Fun. Creating and fostering a culture where your team works hard, plays hard, and has fun, provides additional incentives for your team to work together and help each other.

As you can see, to become a top sales manager you must coach, mentor and organize your sales team to maximize their potential. Successful managers empower their team by providing an atmosphere of trust and encouragement. This is a challenging undertaking that requires skill and experience. Utilizing the sales management techniques set forth above will assist you to build on the strengths of your team and help you to exceed your sales goals.

Please share the sales management techniques that have worked for you, or any other thoughts you have on this article by commenting after this post.

Should you have a sales territory with many potential prospects, it may be okay to minimize the time you invest contacting the so called “problem customers”. However, when you have a small and finite number of customers, you will not be able to ignore any of them and will need to maximize your sales from everyone. Additionally, nobody can afford getting any negative press from customers that will complain about your company’s products or services.

A couple of years ago, I was assigned to a new account that was among the largest manufacturers of photographic and printing equipment in the world. Since they had thrown out one of our products, no one from my company had called on them in over a year! In fact, when I first got the account, a number of people laughed and one individual even said “good luck trying to sell anything to them”. As it turned out, they had been running an old release of our product and it was causing major issues for them in their new environment. As a result, they decided to switch to an alternative solution from another company which also failed. As you can imagine, the person responsible was getting a lot of grief from his management, had been blaming our company, and desperately needed another solution.

Within 90 days after meeting this customer, I was able to solve their problem by simply supplying the latest version of the same product they purchased in the past at no additional charge to them. The person I worked with, along with his management, were delighted with our efforts and the outcome, and opened up the doors to many others in the company. This in turn enabled me and my team to turn one of the worst customers in the area into one of the best who has since purchased many millions of dollars of our products and services.

If you follow these proven sales techniques and provide exceptional customer service, you will greatly improve your relationship with your worst customers, while turning many of them into your best ones.

• Get right to the heart of the problem. If you try and avoid their problem, the resentment will continue to haunt you, the problem will persist, the negativity will spread, and you will be unable to sell anything new to them. If you invest time and resources upfront and face the issue head on, you will gain respect, trust, and build credibility.
• Determine who was affected by the problem and how. By determining all of the individuals the issue impacted and how, you can address them directly, while understanding exactly how serious it was for them. Bad news travels fast, so it’s essential to get to the source and solve the problem to their satisfaction right away.
• Establish a personal win for your customer and they’ll help you sell. If you are able to provide an amicable solution, you’ll be able to turn enemies into loyal internal champions for you and your company. After I managed to solve my customers’ problem, those individuals were very happy to help me by referring me to other key buyers in their company, and we had a real world and relevant success story to share with them.
• Build trust by holding true to your word. Very simply, tell your customer what you and your team can and will do to solve their problem and just do it. Words without actions will get you nowhere and will create even more damage for you and your company.
• Promote your success to the right people. Once the issue has been resolved, be sure the good news, and how you were personally responsible for solving their problem, is communicated quickly and to the most important individuals. If not, some people will not be aware of your involvement or the solution and may continue to spin things negatively. Many times, negative perception can create more damage than the problem itself.

As you can tell, by investing a little extra time improving customer service and solving problems for those that are perceived as being your worst customers, you can significantly increase your sales results by converting them into your best ones.

Please share your thoughts on this article by providing your comments after this post.

What does a reference account do for you? A quality reference will spend time with your prospects explaining, and often demonstrating, the way you and your products solved their specific problem. They are able to also explain the unique ways that their company implemented your products, the processes they followed, and also the resources they utilized for their project. They typically share what worked for them with their real-world situation. This helps your prospect to better realize and appreciate the way your solution can help them solve their problem.

Happy customers are glad to help. Once you have invested some time and provided demonstrable value to your customers, they will likely reciprocate to not only assist you, but they’ll also take pride in how they solved their problem and will want to share their success by telling others both in and out of their company.

The effective use of references as part of your sales strategy will offer numerous benefits including:

• A far more efficient and cheaper approach than traditional sales methods. Utilizing positive referrals is definitely an invaluable tool that will help you boost your sales, particularly when compared to other more complex, time consuming, and expensive methods such as cold calling, product trials, or advertising.
• Providing instant credibility for you and your company. Getting your prospect to speak to or meet with your reference account verifies the solution you are offering with real life and practical examples.
• Validation of what has worked for others. Many companies have common problems and challenges. Your prospects will want to understand how others have addressed and solved the very same issues in order to avoid reinventing the wheel.
• Addressing your prospects internal purchasing requirements. Many companies are required to meet with or speak to several other organizations that have implemented the same product or solution before they make a purchase, in order to mitigate their risk.

As you can see, by establishing your reference account base, you can substantially increase your future sales by leveraging your past successes with very powerful referrals from your happy customers.

Please share your thoughts and feedback on this article by posting your comments below.

Here are some essential things you will need to do to prepare for and conduct a successful job interview:

• Learn about the company and even the person you will interview with. There are many sources to gather information from. Some important facts are the industry they are in, recent performance, major competitors, new announcements, growth areas, and corporate initiatives to name a few. You should also check the background of the person you are meeting with to see how long they’ve been with the company and other interests or experience they may have. I will always ask my candidates what they know about the company to gauge their knowledge and interest and also to determine if they have done their homework. Candidates that ask me about what my company does, will not rank high.
• Dress for success and be on time. If you want to be a sales professional, then it is expected that you look and act like one. You should wear formal attire and arrive early with copies of your resume in hand to ensure that your first impression is a positive one. You don’t want to start an interview by apologizing about why you were late, or leave a negative impression because you were dressed sloppily.  Your resume should be reviewed in advance by others to ensure there are no typos or grammatical errors that could prevent you from ever getting your foot in the door in the first place.
• Relate your skills and experience to the job. Preparation is critical and should start with knowing about the position your are interviewing for. Having that information, you can customize your resume beforehand, and you will also be prepared to discuss how your unique skills and prior experience will map to and enable your success in your new job. Showing a careful confidence without losing sight of humility is important.
• Leverage your prior sales achievements. Every sales manager wants to hire someone that has a solid track record. You should always communicate how you have been successful with examples of your best sales. I always ask my candidates to tell me about one of the most interesting and complex sales they closed, along with the role they played and relationships they’ve built with their customers, to get a sense of their overall process and how they started and lead the sales cycle. I once had a candidate tell me he couldn’t remember one. That was the end of the interview for him.
• Show your passion, desire and have a plan. You may not have every attribute your hiring manager is looking for, however, you should demonstrate your passion to succeed. By having a well thought out plan you can share with your interviewer, you may be able to overcome some or all of your shortfalls. For example, you may not have experience in a comparable industry or with the products or services that company sells. Your plan should include ways to address those shortfalls and indicate what’s worked in the past.  Be specific about how you will learn about their products or services, the expected ramp up time, how you would start, when you would expect to be productive, and what your overall strategy is.
• Ask questions, take notes, and think before you give answers. You should always come prepared with questions about the job opportunity and what qualities the ideal candidate will have.  It always helps to know what will be expected of you and what particular problems they are having, so you can address those points with a solution on the spot.  Be sure you understand the questions and think through your response before blurting out an answer. Answer succinctly and confirm you’ve addressed the question.
• Wrap up and determine next steps. Your exit plan should be as smooth as your entry. Ending your interview abruptly will not go over well and will form a negative impression. You are interviewing for a sales position and should ask closing questions while conveying your sincere interest in the job.  To close your interview effectively, ask about the next steps, and the timing and process for a decision. It’s also helpful to request immediate feedback about the interview.
• Follow up. A prompt follow up will imprint a positive image about you and show that you care. Send a thank you email or letter to each of the interviewers mentioning the key areas of the interview, how your particular experience addresses the qualities of their ideal candidate, and your eagerness to join their team.

By following these sales interview tips, you will be well prepared for your interview and substantially increase your chances of being hired for the job.

Please share your thoughts on this article, and any job interview tips that have worked for you, by providing your comments after this post.

You should always arrange to present your proposal face-to-face to the most senior people that will be deciding on the product your customer will ultimately purchase. By having the right people in the room at once, you will simplify the negotiating process while enabling you to get immediate feedback from the decision makers themselves. You will also be able to qualify the validity of your solution, the compelling event driving your customer and how it relates to their priorities, along with the time frame in which they need to make a purchase. Many times your proposal will be distributed amongst other executives further emphasizing the need for it to live on its own when you are not there to support the value of your product. Do not deliver your proposal via e-mail and hope or assume your customer will examine and understand all of the essential attributes and the value you are offering.

Following are some of the most important ingredients to include in your proposal:

• Executive Summary. This section should describe your customers priority, along with the challenge they are facing, and a brief, high level description about the uniqueness of your product or service and how it addresses your customers particular problems.

• Solution Overview. The overview should further elaborate on your solution with some facts and examples of how it maps to the particular challenges and overall strategy of your customer. You should incorporate items such as the goals and findings of any proof of concept completed, along with the names of the individuals involved on your customers evaluation team, and results of any other customer site visits or reference calls completed. If you had a partner involved, share their findings and recommendation or endorsement to further substantiate your solution. You should also indicate the time your customer invested and the steps completed to prove how your product is a viable solution for their company. This will build substantial credibility for you and your company.

• Implementation Plan. Show the high level project plan along with a timeline along with professional services needed for implementing your solution. For technical products, you should include a high level solution architecture. This will not only demonstrate the completeness of your solution, it will also show how you will get the job completed and validate exactly when the project needs to start to meet your customers deadline and will further confirm the compelling event. For example, if your customer needs a solution implemented in six months, and your project will take five months from beginning to end, that leaves one month to negotiate a contract, allocate resources, and kick off the project. Showing that detail will help support the fact that you and your customer need to get a contract signed and start the project without delay.

• Education Plan. The education plan (as required) should detail all of the instructional classes needed, timing of those classes, the curriculum summary, and the people your customer should have attend. This plan should be incorporated into the implementation plan above.

• Financial Investment Summary. The investment summary should clearly represent the total financial outlay for your proposal including a breakout of the fees of your products, services, any applicable training, along with the payment schedule. If there are any financial incentives or special discounts you are offering, make sure that you show exactly what they are, and the financial savings provided as compared to what the “normal” or “typical” pricing would be. It’s also helpful to show the estimated time frame for your customers return on investment as well as any hard dollar cost savings your proposal provides.

• Proposal Conditions. If there are special conditions tied to your proposal, be sure they are documented and reviewed during your meeting. These would typically be items that would help you meet your targeted close date, or help you with future commitments from your customer, or other items that would help you generate incremental future business, and should always be considered for inclusion. For example, you may have a due date for a signed contract, or a condition your client must satisfy such as volume purchases needed to preserve special pricing, etc.

• Agreement Framework. This is usually a description of the product names and quantities, along with professional services and education that are required for your solution and included in your proposal. Additionally, you should specify the contract vehicle to be used so that you can confirm the purchasing process, and the resources needed to get your agreement signed.

• Proposal Benefits. This section is just about the most important element of your proposal and provides the opportunity for you to tie all of the pieces together. You should summarize and highlight the overall benefits you are providing and briefly recap each of the previously mentioned items while reinforcing the completeness of your solution and any other exceptional elements.

After you have gone through the presentation of your proposal, your customer will have a clear understanding of all pertinent aspects of your solution and how they relate to and resolve their business problem. Furthermore, you will have much better insight into what’s needed to close your deal. Now that you’ve demonstrated how you have earned the business, be sure to ask for it.

By following these simple and repeatable steps, you will save time developing future proposals as well as increase your sales performance, while demonstrating your professionalism, reliability, and the unique value you provide to your customers.

Throughout my career while selling enterprise software solutions, I’ve carried out hundreds of deal reviews and still continue to on a regular basis. Whether you are a sales rep or a sales manager, you can be confident in your forecast by analyzing the key aspects of your sales opportunities. Furthermore, you will be able to easily determine whether or not a deal is going to close within the time frame you expect, and will also be able to quickly and easily pinpoint the business risks you have and how to mitigate them.

In most cases, what you don’t know about your own deals will cause you to waste time and resources, and by building a plan with the needed steps to closure, you will have a defined process to follow which will help you get your contract signed in the fastest way possible.

The following are some of the most important pieces of information and facts you need to gather to determine what stage your deal is at, along with the sales techniques to follow to close your deals:

• Is your solution a priority for your customer that’s driven by, as well as tied to a corporate initiative supported by executive management? Understanding and demonstrating how your product is linked to that priority will substantially accelerate your sales cycle.
• Have you presented a proposal clearly detailing the customers priority, how your solution addresses their main problem, the investment they require, the financial benefits and cost savings they will eventually receive, and the time and effort it will take to implement your solution? You will usually never get your deal finalized until your client has validated your proposal and confirmed your targeted close date.
• Have you identified the compelling event that will influence your customer to sign your contract by the date you are forecasting? There’s usually a deadline or event which is driving your customer to move forward. Without knowing about that event, or the business impact caused by missing their deadline, makes it more difficult to know when and why they will close your deal.
• Do you know exactly who the primary stake holders are that need to approve your deal and the funding for the purchase along with their approval process and availability? I’ve seen many deals slip at the end of the quarter because the primary approvers were not available or an approval deadline was missed. For example, some large purchases require board approvals which may only take place at certain times during the year.
• Is there an approved spending budget, and will the budget amount end up being lost if not exhausted. If the budget is not approved, is there an exception process that will be implemented? Financial constraints should be determined at the onset of a new product sales cycle to avoid wasting time on initiatives that have no approved funding.
• Do you know about what the competition is offering as well as what their particular strengths and weaknesses are and how they are thought of by your customer? Never assume that you are the only one your customer is talking to, as many companies are required to consider multiple suppliers before selecting a final one.
• With respect to your customers procurement process, have you confirmed who will manage and negotiate the business terms, how long it takes, how many people are involved, and who is authorized to approve and sign your legal contracts? Every company has a different process, and many times the people who you present and negotiate an initial proposal with do not have the final word. Many times, you will be referred to a purchasing team to finish your deal after you have provided your “bottom line” prices. Take the time to ask these types of questions to be sure that you understand the process upfront, and are not surprised by other people that step in and ask for more price reductions and additional terms, well after you thought you were finished negotiating.

Once you understand all of these essential elements and by following these sales methods, you will be in a much better position to demonstrate the value you can deliver to your customer, more accurately forecast when your business will close, and increase your sales performance with less time and effort.

Here’s a good example of how corporate priorities can turn into revenue for a smart sales rep.  A few years ago, the company I worked for had a corporate priority and requirement to automate the process of keeping track of our customers, managing information about each of our relationships with them, and streamlining the forecasting and other sales processes. This initiative was established at the president level and led by the executive vice president of sales. There was a twelve month deadline to find and implement a customer relationship management (CRM) application. If you were the sales rep supporting my company, and were selling a CRM solution, and knew about this priority and the associated deadline before any of your competitors, you would not only have a jump on your competition, you would also know that you had a very motivated customer with a very real compelling event.  As a result of this priority, my company purchased and implemented a multi-million dollar solution within the twelve month target.

Another example where this worked for me was with one of my customers who had a corporate priority to improve compliance and reduce risks. They had failed an audit because they did not have tight control over who had access to their financial systems. As a result, they had a requirement to implement an automated access control security system to lock down their servers and applications to their “authorized” users. By understanding their priority, I knew this was a critical and funded initiative. Since I also knew the importance of the project for my customer, and my company had a viable solution, I became their priority so they could understand how I could help them solve their problem. Furthermore, I was in early to complete a proof of concept with our security solution which resulted in a multi-million dollar sale for me and my team.

Here’s some of the added benefits derived from knowing my customers priorities and the success we achieved with this sale:

• My team was first to the table to help my customer determine the success criteria for their project which was based on our solution. This made it much more difficult for our competitors.
• I was able to directly map our solution to the corporate priority which in turn made me much more relevant and facilitated my access to their senior executives.
• I was able to clearly determine the importance and timeline for my customer which helped me get the best resources to support the proof of concept.
• My knowledge enabled me to accurately forecast a multi-million dollar opportunity since I had a very compelling event and knew about my customers deadline.
• I did not have to offer special financial incentives to close the deal and was able to maximize the revenue that me and my team received.
• The success from this project along with the added benefits my customer received, greatly increased the credibility of me personally as well as my company which led to many additional product sales.

As you can see, If you focus your time and attention directly on understanding your customers’ priorities, you will minimize or even eliminate time wasted with individuals or projects that are not really important for your customer. Additionally, you will be able to become your customers priority and increase your sales.

Please share your thoughts on this article by providing your comments after this post.

Effective time management

A simple sales tip to follow is to ask yourself periodically during the day whether or not what you are working on at that moment will help you close a deal within the month or quarter you are focused on. If the answer is “no”, stop what you are doing, and move on to a more productive activity that will.