Tag: sales

Sales Coaching, Sales Management, Sales Techniques

5 tips to help you sell against your competitors

Posted on by Tom Lavery

B2B sales is highly competitive. In all the sales I’ve experienced, the competition has been involved in the process at some point. This could be at the very beginning, half way through or the end.  Whether you like it or not, there is always a competitor or an alternative option just lurking around the corner.  So how do you know when to sell over your competitors? Which ones are in involved? When is the ideal time to discuss them?  How do you weave them into the conversation? What do you say about them?

These are skills I developed over the years and used to my advantage to get the very best results. Here are some tips that I hope help you.

Never talk trash about your competitors

The best ways to act, whether you are selling to SMB or Enterprise, is to act humble. Have humility, show that you really care and have empathy with your sales prospect. If you talk trash about your competitors at any point in the sales process you are showing none of these qualities. You also risk losing the credibility you have already earned. It is always best to show respect to everyone in your marketplace.

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Leadership, Motivation, Sales Techniques

Looking back at over 500 sales..

Posted on by Tom Lavery

Sorry there has been no post for two weeks I have have been busy wrapping up my role at Reward Gateway.  After 8 amazing  years, it is time to move on. I worked with some great people and we had fantastic results I am very proud of.

In my time I closed over 300 new clients and was involved in over 500 sales. On my last day, I had a chance to sit down with my friend and CEO, Glenn Elliott and talk about the last 8 years. We discuss my favorite memories, sales tips, how the industry has changed, and my plans for the future. We really enjoyed recording this so I wanted to share with you all.

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Sales Coaching, Sales Productivity, Sales Techniques

The difference between missing and crushing your quota

Posted on by Tom Lavery

Over my years in sales, I can attribute my success to my diligence and level of activity. I knew I was always outperforming our competitors because my level of activity and contact points were 5 times higher than everyone else’s.

People are busy and as a sales professional, you are very rarely at the top of anyone’s list. So to be really successful you need to engineer a position where you keep connected to your prospect so that you stay at the front of their mind.  This applies when you are hunting an inbound or outbound lead, or connecting with an existing account or opportunity.

The problem

I have seen this in all countries I have worked in and across multiple sales and account management teams. It goes something like this…

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Leadership, Motivation, Sales Management

6 secrets to building a winning sales team

Posted on by Tom Lavery

Managing a team of sales professionals is one of the hardest jobs in any business. You have a group of guys and girls that will, no doubt, be a mix of talent, skill and ability. That is just your starting point. Then you have to lead, manage, motivate, engage and coach this lot. Throw into the mix what they have to deal with the day to day… huge highs and lows of being in sales. It is not like finance or product teams where they can just put their heads down and finish their task or project with fewer interruptions or curve balls. It is a whole different ball game. So when you put all this together with the pressure of sales and delivering a number it’s a big job, and a very hard one to get consistently right.

At Reward Gateway (which was Asperity), we went from doing less than 250k per year in 2007 to £2.9M a year in 2011, just in new business. Recently a VP Sales asked me what the secret was behind this. He was looking to make 5 new hires while scaling and growing his SaaS business. The truth is all the things you naturally think of as being really important like Lead generation, CRM management, Marketing automation, Your Sales playbook and Pipeline Management are not the defining factors in high performance. Most VP’s of Sales can come into a business, work with the team and vendors, and implement these processes. What truly makes a high performing Sales Team is the other magic you put on top of this. Here are the 6 things that I feel are most important when building a successful sales team.

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Motivation, Sales Techniques

5 ways to stay consistently motivated in Sales

Posted on by Tom Lavery

As a professional Sales Rep or Manager, you face many challenges and roadblocks on a daily basis and sales is always a rollercoaster. It’s easy to be motivated when things are going smoothly. You’re reaching contacts, setting appointments and closing deals. How do you stay motivated the rest of the time…when you are getting more no’s than yes’, can’t seem to fill your calendar and pipeline or when your quota seems unattainable? This happens to all of us.  Here are a few tips that will help.

Be positive

In sales, we all know you have as many ups as you do downs. Don’t focus on failures. It is better to focus on each success no matter how small or large. Always try to find the positive side of things. If you experience something that seems negative it is often a valuable learning experience that will make the next similar situation easier to work through. When you look for the positive and start with an optimistic attitude, you will find it makes everything run more smoothly. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” So believe that you can!

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Sales Coaching, Sales Techniques, Sales Training

How to sell over your competitors

Posted on by Tom Lavery

There are many important attributes to being a top sales professional that come naturally. As Daniel Pink explains in his book, “To Sell is Human”, the modern salesperson needs Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity to be successful. There are other sales skills you learn over time, and in your business, like understanding and selling your product, how to frame your sales call and how to sell the success stories of your clients. One of the biggest things that is frequently missed is to how to correctly sell against your competition. Here are some ways to help with this.

Never bad mouth your competition 

Start with this very simple rule..It may seem obvious. But you’d be surprised how many time people do this. You can always tell by the questions the buyer asks , especially if you are not the first to present. Always make sure you approach talking about your competition in a professional manor. Make sure you carefully select the language you use to explain how you are better so you aren’t damning in any way.

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Sales Productivity, Sales Techniques

5 ways you can get your signed contract back quicker, and speed up your sales cycle

Posted on by Tom Lavery

Over the last 10 years, we have seen great advancement in sales tech, especially around sales efficiency. One of the crowning glories of this, in the SaaS world, is EchoSign which has made it possible to get a Contract, SOW or NDA signed electronically very quickly. An amazing tool that I personally love using.

As the way of the world, we too often end up relying on technology as the crutch. I still see no increase in the time it takes sales teams to get the signed contract back from a client after first engaging them. It is only when the contract is actually ready to be signed by both parties that a tool like EchoSign speeds things up and saves the time of printing, scanning, and more.

As a sales professional, you still need to reverse engineer the process, thinking through all the steps your contact will go through. Here are some simple steps to speed up this part of the sales cycle to get your contract back quicker.

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Motivation, Sales Techniques

Sales Shake TV – Episode #1 is now live

Posted on by Tom Lavery

I am excited to launch the very first episode of Sales Shake TV on YouTube. The format for the show is 4 questions each answered in just 1 minute so easy to watch on the go. It has been great to get so much feedback from you guys since I started the blog in February. A big shout out to David Sim, Tim Young, Tom Glason and Andre Butler for your questions.  I hope you enjoy the show as much I did filming it.

Sales Shake TV needs your questions on all things sales to work, so if you would like to feature on the show please email your questions here or tweet them to @TomLavery7 with the #salesshake. You can also subscribe to the YouTube channel here.

 

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Leadership, Sales Techniques

How to stay connected to your customer to increase sales

Posted on by Tom Lavery

How well are you connected to your customers? In today’s business environment it’s easy to lose touch with their needs, concerns, and business issues.  Falling into the day to day routine of your job description.  Getting caught up in internal meetings, 1- to-1’s,  and pipeline reviews can distract you from the most important task of all…staying current with what is important to your customers and prospective customers. Having this valuable information can allow you to continually adapt your sales message to keep it relevant.

You need to spot trends in what’s supporting the buying decision. Understand how your customers want to be sold to.  Which content on your company website, sales presentations, sales demo’s and throughout the sales process prospects find most engaging? How important were each of your company’s USP’s and what was the WOW factor in their buying decision? Understanding this, and more will help you find and sell to more customers. It will help you connect with customers and prospects on a better level giving you an advantage over your competition. Here are four things you can start doing now to stay connected with your customers and prospects.

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Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Productivity, Sales Training

Why your sales training needs to be like your exercise routine

Posted on by Tom Lavery

A classic mistake with sales training is to do it every so often like once a month or quarter. You’re too busy trying to hit your  numbers and firefighting that training often gets pushed down the list of priorities until we have an urgent issue.  Most sales training, when conducted this way, is often in the format of a whole day or half day of internal training, consultants or an external trainer. Problem is, training will not have an impact in isolation. Done this way it’s such a small part of your team’s work week, month or year.

Think about training like you would exercise

If you don’t work out regularly you get unfit, fat and out of shape. The same goes for sales training.  You can’t just go do a 10k run or play a match without doing anything for weeks. Sales training needs to be like a successful exercise routine: have a good frequency, be varied and be the right length based on your goals.

To get fit you create a plan to do it.  To train your team  for peak performance, you need to do the same. Here are some simple tips you can use to introduce your new approach to sales training.

Create a training plan.  Start somewhere and commit to it

You cannot wing it each week or it will not happen. Your plan should include scheduled group training as well as individual self-paced training. Create a plan so everyone knows where they stand for the week and the month.  This way your team won’t book calls and other meetings in the slots you create for group training.  You need to nail them down to the time and everyone needs to know it’s Monday at 10 am or Friday at 3 pm, that’s when we do this…or both.  This may sound simple but just having it added to everyone’s calendars will make a huge difference.

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