Next Public QBS Event: May 3-4th

Twice per year (in Atlanta) Tom Freese hosts an open enrollment QBS Methodology Summit that serves as a boot-camp style introduction to some participants, while serving as a QBS refresher to others. We will have a full day of training on Thursday May 3rd, and then finish by 1:00pm on Friday May 4th, so people can easily travel back to their respective home bases.

Registration for this event will begin approximately 8 weeks in advance of the event dates so look for a posting on the QBS website. Early enrollment is $595 versus the standard $750 tuition the week of the event. The last four open enrollment events have been completely SOLD OUT so I recommend you make a note to secure your reservations early.

Please call our office with questions at (770) 840-7640. 

Feedback from January Summit

“This training wasn’t just theory. We heard specific examples and I really liked this aspect of it.”

“The QBS training was more precise with specific tips, not just the generic information I’ve gotten with other programs.”

“Gold Medals vs. German Shepherds is a technique I learned that was a favorite that I know will make a big impact on my sales moving forward.”

“Very different and beneficial approach to selling. I loved the conversational layering model.”

“This was by far the best training I’ve attended.”

“I enjoyed the training very much! I truly feel I will benefit from this experience/training.”

“The QBS methodology suits my selling style far better than any other training I’ve taken. “

“I feel I learned a lot about cold calling techniques that will really help me.”

“The strategy that I believe was my favorite and that will prove to be the most helpful is leaving effective voice mails to increase call backs.”

“I rated this class and the instructor all 10’s!”

Can Your Dog Sell?

Selling continues to be the least taught profession in the world! Does anyone think that’s strange? Sales drives every company, yet most of the top business schools in the world don’t offer a sales curriculum. Somehow we rely on the thought that salespeople inherently already know “how” to sell. Maybe it’s supposed to be in our DNA? 

Consider the amount of training necessary to become an architect, attorney, doctor, engineer, teacher, nurse, pharmacist or city planner. There is a minimum scholastic requirement followed by rigorous testing and continuing education. Whew! To say that you are a sales professional only requires that you print business cards.

Case in point: In the state of Georgia (my home state), you have to have a license to catch a fish, or own a dog, but you can sell many things including sophisticated products and services without any required training whatsoever. Note that I am NOT speaking out for more legislation. Just wanted to point out the parallel between skills development and your probability of success in sales.

Need a Good Closing Line?

The end of a month, quarter, or year usually brings along with it some pressure to wrap up pending sales transactions. Some trainers tout closing tricks or gimmicks as if they are sure-fire ways close the deal. I find that very few customers want to be tricked into buying a product or service. Closing is still an important skill set in sales, so here are a few tips that might help.

First, closing a deal is not something that should sound self-serving. Anything that starts with "I would like to suggest that you…", invites more risk into the equation than value. A better approach would be to simply say, "Mr. Customer, would it make sense to ______?" Simply insert an appropriate next step, which could easily be wrapping up the transaction, and you are in a very good spot.

Rather than risk sounding like you are prematurely counting your chickens before they’ve hatched, you instead are inserting logic into the equation, where if it does make sense to take the suggested next step, then it’s logical and reasonable to suggest moving forward. If not, you have a perfect opportunity to find out what might be holding up the decision.

Don’t forget that deals need to be ready to ‘be closed’ before any suggestion to move forward with a transaction would be appropriate. Does the customer see and appreciate the full value of your product or service? Do they recognize the existence of multiple needs? Are the right people involved? do they have enough ‘ammunition’ to sell your proposed solution internally to their boss or approval committee?

Lastly, there’s no edict that requires sellers to wait until the last minute to complete a transaction. In fact, with some deals, it’s smart to give incentives to wrap up the transaction earlier rather than waiting until the eleventh hour. And, as some of you already know, if a December deal isn’t pretty much iced by the 15th or 16th, then it’s probably not going to happen.  The “trick” is having candid conversations with customers early enough so they can then help you navigate the buying process mid-month as opposed to worrying over the holidays about whether Santa will put a bluebird in your stocking this year.

Developing Highly Effective Sales Teams

Who’s responsible for developing your team’s sales capabilities? It’s a fair question, but one that doesn’t seem to have a very consistent answer.

There’s one school of thought that the key to having effective salespeople is to simply hire the top performers in your respective industry. That is easier said than done. Successful salespeople are probably already making a hefty living as is, and oftentimes, they feel very comfortable and secure with their current job. Why give up a good thing?

Even if you are able to snag a perennial top performer from another company, there’s a catch. Performance, when measured by numbers alone, can be very misleading. For example, a salesperson who achieved their goals because they happened to be the rep on one giant account, or because they inherited a ripe territory, doesn’t mean they know how to build a book of business from scratch.

If ‘ready-made’ top performance isn’t available, the other option organizations have is to bring solid people aboard with a commitment to then develop those people into quality sales professionals. 

Developing top performing salespeople then becomes the actual challenge.

When I was invited to speak to a group of seniors at Clemson University earlier this year, I posed this question: "How many of you (who are about to graduate) have ever taken a sales course?" Not surprisingly, zero hands went up–as sales continues to be the least taught profession in the world. Even with experienced professionals, you can’t count on their previous training for high performance.

Sure, there are lots of trainers and speakers who would love to have a shot at "motivating your people to achieve their true potential." Ironically, much of the sales training content that’s currently available is contradicted by other course content, in which case, sellers are left to their own devices to figure out how to succeed.

I can relate to these contradictions in content because Question Based Selling is often brought in to "un-teach" approaches that no longer yield positive results. 

Whether you saddle up with QBS or choose someone else’s methodology, I encourage clients to enable the full implementation. The assumption that sellers are already capable of being highly successful has led to a ‘one-&-done’ mentality (that’s what we call it in the training business), where companies looking for instant results end up diluting their sales team’s effectiveness by shifting to a new training model at subsequent sales meetings, whose only link to the previous paradigm can be seen in the use of common industry buzzwords.

The questions for developing productive salespeople are pretty simple:

Q:"What are you doing to leverage curiosity in the sales process?"

Q:"How are you differentiating yourself from your toughest competitors?"

Q:"What are you doing to earn credibility rather than just trying to claim it?"

Q: "What’s your strategy for causing prospective customers to ‘want to’ share information with a salesperson they don’t yet know or trust?"

Q: "How can you lessen the effects of increased customer skepticism toward vendors to actually close more deals faster?"

Putting the answer to these questions into practice and becoming a student of the sales process may require a little effort mixed with some honest introspection.

The question now is… When would you like to get started?

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