Inbound Marketing: How do sales people fit in?
If you’ve been following our post on the growth of Inbound Marketing (click here if you don’t know what Inbound is), you will understand that sales people can no longer say “we’ve got the best products, best service, etc.” Your online content, website, blog etc. must also show your unique value proposition. CEO Juice can help with some of this content, whether it’s Net Promoter Score, Favorite Comments, Billing Accuracy or service metrics.However your sales team needs to be in sync, they need to understand why prospects partner with you and be able to recite that message in their sleep.
Are Specialists masking the problem?
As dealers look to grow Managed Print or get in to Managed IT many have put in place sales specialists (Subject Matter Experts) to help sell Managed IT for example. The intention is to support the existing sales force, but from our experience it appears that many sales guys don’t feel comfortable having the business discussions around Managed IT without the Subject Matter expert present, so we have a bottleneck.
I have a dual role at CEO Juice, one part focused on implementing more sales processes included in your subscription, the other promoting best in class sales training from www.salescoach.com. This training is about enabling the sales guys to ask really good questions, so they can get an understanding of the challenges and the pain points the customer is facing. Ideally, they need only involve the specialist at the point where you are putting together a solution.
Sales success needs on-going reinforcement
We believe training is a process, not an event. Simply put, there are no quick fixes. Studies show that training events, without consistent reinforcement, fail to produce lasting benefits. Converting sales training into well-developed skills is like mastering golf or learning to play an instrument; it just doesn’t happen overnight. Every Common Sense Selling program comes with an extensive reinforcement component. We have recently taken that a step further and CEO Juice are putting automation behind online sales training (click here for more) which will allow that reinforcement to be tailored to the individual. If you have a sales guy who is not making enough appointments he can be directed to an online module on prospecting for example. For dealers looking to expand their offerings and go “wider” in accounts, dedicated specialists can be freed up if sales can just be taught to ask the right questions.
Don’t forget the boss
The Sales Manager or VP Sales at your dealer needs just as much support, whether its hiring the right people, to defining the sales metrics and having the tools to coach and motivate the team. We provide the training and ongoing reinforcement for Sales Managers to help ensure the ongoing success of the team (for an overview click here.
Summary
If you would like us to review your website and differentiation message and even get an understanding of where your sales team is struggling click here.
Frank Harkins
Sales Process & Sales Training
Frank@ceojuice.com
858.776.1040
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