Coaching the Sale – Part 2 – The Inner Game of Selling

Timothy Gallway initially wrote a series of books aimed at sports and business professionals, the focus was on helping them to master their “inner game” (Inner Game of Golf, Inner Game of Work ). In a nutshell unpicking their positive and negative self talk and turning the volume up on the positive to improve performance.

We all have an inner dialogue, Gallway describes the negative as Self 1 and the positive as Self 2.

As sales people our inner dialogue might sound something like:-

Self 1 – Negative Mindset	Self 2 – Positive Mindset
“They don’t understand the solution”	“I can help them to understand”
“They won’t buy from us”	“We can win the business”
“They don’t have any budget”	“Lets find a financial solution”
“There is no interest they don’t return calls”	“A no does not mean never”
“There are no opportunities in this market”	“Lets carve a niche in this market”
“It’s a recession no one is buying”	“Competition means someone is buying”

The impact of negative Self 1 thinking on positive Self 2 thinking is called interference and this manifests itself in Self Doubt and Fear which disables people from selling effectively.

One way to improve your performance as a sales person is to identify negative thinking and to question it.

The easiest way to get your Self 1 to “Shut Up” is to challenge it, ask yourself if you really know these thoughts to be true, ask questions, of yourself, your prospects, your marketeers, your clients.

What is the truth?

Assumptions and judgements simply support our Self 2 thinking and act as barriers for action. Use facts against your negative Self 1.

The best way to support your positive Self 2 is to listen to it more, don’t dismiss it, write it down. Positive Self 2 thinking is a fuel for Salespeople and gets many of us through the day.

If we think we can and believe we can, we will.  

How to run an Online Sales Meeting – Demo

There are lots of applications which will facilitate the organisation and running of an online meeting or demonstration, popular and well proven applications include Webex and GoToMeeting. Both will incur a monthly fee. There are also FREE lighter alternatives ones which come higly recommended GoLiveRoom and OnWebinar.

When planning an online demonstration, presentation and/or online meeting there is more than the meeting application to consider. When preparing for the meeting take time to think through the following:

1. Keep it Short

Keep it short, 30 minutes – 1hour for a first meeting is about right. They may be able to see you on screen, even so their attention span is shortened by a 2D experience. Do not spend the first 10 minutes explaining who you are and what you do, get straight into asking them questions and showing them the solutions to the problems they share with you. If you have committed to a time make sure you stick to it, it is easy to see impatience face to face, you won’t spot a tapping foot online!

2. Be Yourself

In a face to face presentation your personality and presence can create an impression and leave an impact. Online you loose much of this impact so this is not a time to hold back, be yourself confidently and practice your online demonstration on someone you know first. Ask them for an opinion on how you come across and how this differs when you are face to face, this will give you an idea of where you might need to adapt your communication style to accommodate for online meetings.

3. Ask Questions

You don’t have the body language and facial expressions of your audience to guage the impact of what you are discussing with them. To account for this ask MORE QUESTIONS. Before the meeting prepare a list of all the things you need to know about the prospect / client / delegate. Here is a prompt list to get you started:-

• How did they hear about you
• Why are they looking at your organisation
• What is the reason for looking at your product or service
• What problem will it solve for them / the business
• What must your solution do
• Which other solutions have they looked at
• What would stop them from buying your product or service
• Who is not in the meeting that is involved in the purchasing process
• What are their timescales and budgets

Online meetings are often shorter, you can’t expect to front or back end load the meeting with your questions. So you will need to spread the questions out throughout the demonstration. Try asking them at points when there is a natural stop or break in the demonstration. E.g., when you are launching a new application, running a report, opening a document or file. It will also seem more natural. Having a list at your hand will really help.

4. Don’t over do the detail

To keep an online meeting audience engaged they need to be involved in the meeting, so talking at them for more than 5 minutes is sure to switch them off. If you need to use a presentation stick to a very small number of slides 3-5 at most. Things to include – Clients, reasons why clients choose your solution, awards / accreditations, pricing. Avoid – lengthly feature lists, too many words and diagrams, company histories, detailed product roadmaps.

When demonstrating the application / service stick to showing the features that the client wants to see. The most important questions at the start of the meeting should be “what are you hoping this solution can do for you”, “what would you like to see it do?”. Once they are satisfied it can do what they need it to do then move onto the features which will add value and differentiate you from the competition. Don’t over do it. Remeber Paretos Law – 80% of people only use 20% off an application. You may be excited by all the great new features, don’t assume they are.

Finally, online meetings do create additional challenges and they will not replace face to face meetings entirely. However the benefits cannot be disputed. For both vendor and client it; saves time and money, speeds up the buying process and enables more people to be involved where ever they are based in the world. Whilst online meetings process miss valuable human interaction they certainly make up for this in their ability to involve more people, any time, any where.

Join Salescake at one of our events

Salescake is supporting a number of organisatons with business events throughout 2011.

For further information please download our events brochure here salescake_events2011

Event Calendar

8th February - European Mentoring and Coaching Council
How to sell and market your coaching business – Zandra Moore, Jennifer Holloway
3 Albion Place, Leeds – 5.30pm

22nd February – Leeds University Business School
Leading yourself and others through changing business landcapes – Havana Abid
YorkshireBank Lecture Theatre, Leeds University Business School – 6pm

7th March – CoachCloud
Running a successful coaching business – Zandra Moore, Jennifer Holloway, Zulfi Hussain MBE
Regus, City West Business Park, Leeds – 9am – 11.30am

29th March - Institute of Directors
Turning around Turnaround – Christine Elliott
3 Albion Place, Leeds – 8am – 10.30am

Salescake Takes to the Water

Salescake Director, Zandra Moore in her role as Vice Chairman for IoD West Yorkshire captained an IoD dragon boat as part of a grueling charity challenge to raise over £700 for a local worthy cause.

The team of 16 Yorkshire business leaders donned Roman fancy dress before joining more than 40 other boats all powering down the waterways of Leeds’ Clarence Dock on Saturday in aid of the Leeds Community Foundation which supports over 1000 community groups in Leeds.

Zandra Moore said “ This is the first time that Salescake has taken part in this event and the sun must certainly have been shining on us as the team managed to come 6th out of 38, we are aiming for the top 3 next year”. The event brought out both members and their families with childrens activities, BBQs, beer and sunshine there was plenty to keep the team and their supporters entertained throughout the day. “The team spirit was amazing considering we had met for the first time at the start of the day, we were all chanting in unison and banging our paddles in true warrior style by the end” said Zandra Moore.

See Salescakes Guest blog at http://iodyorkshire.co.uk/?p=10

Why should social enterprises use online social media?

What is online social media and Web 2.0?

Experts quibble over the exact definition of what is web 2.0 in summary it is understood to describe social networking websites featuring user-generated content. These include networks such as Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn and Twitter. The virtual world Second Life also qualifies, as does MySpace and video-swapping sites such as You Tube.

As an example one professional membership organisation CIPD has engaged in all the free online web 2.0 applications with a clear strategy http://www.cipd.co.uk/news/socialnetworking.htm

They have multiple Twitter feeds, Blogs, communities of employees and members on Facebook and LinkedIn, published events on MyEvents and information videos on You Tube.

Its free, the catch you need the resource to manage and update it and a clear strategy so that content is appropriate to realise the benefits. 

Leveraging Profile

What value do Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter provide?

Facebook is a social networking website that allows users to join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. It is primarily focused on “social interactions” outside the context of a corporation, though there are a number of companies using it as well such as Accenture, PWC, Serena, Intel, and Microsoft to connect with fellow employees. The site http://facebookadvice.com/  provides some great advice how to get personal and professional value from Facebook.

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. It is mainly used for professional networking. The purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. Users can make connections with other users and be introduced to new people via those connections. It allows members to join groups used mainly as discussion forums. Guy Kawasaki has a great post on his blog how to use LinkedIn http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/ten_ways_to_use.html

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates, otherwise known as tweets, which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them, by “following” that user.  Businesses such as Cisco Systems, Whole Foods Market, Dell, Zappos.com, and Comcast use Twitter to provide updates to customers.

  Crowdsourcing –  what is it?

Crowdsourcing is asking for information or advice from many others to solve a problem.  For example people trying to decide whether or not to see a movie might ask followers on Twitter to ask who had seen it and what did they think?

For businesses it is a great way to do free market research and gain professional advice quickly. Posting questions on groups in LinkedIn is an easy way to do this as you don’t have to be personally connected to individuals and you can pick the relevant group for the question you want to ask.

LinkedIn

• 13 million unique visitors per month
• 43 million members globally
• 10 million Europe, most of which UK
• Average age 41
• Half of members are business decision makers
• Grew by 20% last month in comparison to Facebook at 14%

Twitter

• growing at 2,565 %.
• 20million unique visitors per month.
• Average age 37
• The 25-44 age group are the main users spending on average 20 mins per day

Facebook

• 120million unique visitors per month
• Age 18-25 years 35%, 26-34 years 24%, 35-44 years 17%

Benefits to Social Enterprises

• Free online brand marketing
• Online communities your customers and employees can network and collaborate
• Market research to understand the needs of your business stakeholders
• Event promotion and management
• Sharing information with your stakeholders
• Targeting the private sector

For social enterprises with little  marketing and sales resource LinkedIn is an increadibly powerful tool enabling you to connect to corporates easily and FREE. If you would be interested in attending a seminar in Yorkshire on How to make Social Media work for Social Enterprise then please contact info@salescake.com.

Investing in morality

How commoditisation has detatched us from the morality of what we buy and sell

The financial market collapse and expenses scandals has made us question our business leaders and politicians morality. Markets have been allowed to grow and trade as a system with no moral guidelines detached from the common good, it seems everything can be commodotised and given a price.

The Radio 4 Leith Lectures by Proffessor Sandal covers this debate and provides some food for thought as to how politics, business and our personal lives may need to change to bring morality back into society.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9

Where commoditisation misses morality

• Buying blood in America has reduced the quantity and quality of supplies because it changes blood from a gift to a product and detaches it from the common good of altruism.
• Charging parents a fee when they pick kids up late from nursery has increased the instances of late pick ups as parents instead of seeing it as a fine see it as a fee for a service. Detaching them from the guilt.
• Countries trading CO2 quotas does this create greener societies or is it trading responsibility?

Markets are a system for the proliferation and generation of wealth, you can’t commodotise common good or morals so the question is how do we inject morality into politics and business in a way that can be measured and monitored? Should this be top down?

The recent bottom up approach seems to be failing, applying morality to consumer choice through fair trade, organics etc is all good when the economy is buoyant. With the ethical market seeing a fall in sales, people seem to be trading moral values for value for money. Morality it seems does have a price.

So with morality at the top looking questionanble is a new wave of leadership incorporating ethics and morality in decision making likely? Are we set for a sea change?

Perhaps this is a likely scenario. Politicians instead of trading Co2 they decide to tackle it head on and rule one car per house, reducing CO2 emmissions and forcing people to car share and use public transport. This in turn fosters a sense of community as we rely more on each other. Society in turn starts to value relationships and measures these based on how we can help each other. Moral values increase.

Questions to think about

How does your organisation foster a sense of morality and responsibility?

Does what you sell and buy as an organisation support social responsibility?

Are your moral values similar to the organisation and its stakeholders?

If morality is on the increase then you need to be investing yourself and your organisation in it.

 

 

The rise of social enterprise

Social enterprise have really come into their own over the last decade. Household names include The Big Issue, Divine Chocolate Company and Cafe Direct. Most social enterprises however are small local initiatives run for social and environmental purposes – there are approximately 62,000 in the UK with a combined turnover of at least £27 billion, and they contribute £8.4 billion per year to the UK economy, that’s nearly 1% of annual GDP.

The average social enterprise employs 10 people but nearly half employ fewer than 10, 38% employ between 10 and 49. Most UK social enterprises operate in the health and social care sector (around 33%). This includes daycare, childcare, welfare and guidance, as well as accommodation services.

Angela Smith, Minister for the Third Sector said: “The best social enterprises are innovative and inspiring business models proving what can be achieved when social and environmental values are placed at the heart of business practices”. 

There is a strong public appetite for socially responsible business, particular in the current economic climate, and social enterprises have a key role to play in creating a more responsible economy of the future.  Amy Pearl, Executive Director of Springboard Innovation*, states ” the traditional institutions have failed us. We each have a role to play, Social enterprise aims to be “the fifth space”, an entity borrowing the best out of the first four spaces (government, business, academia, nonprofit) while avoiding their negatives”.

Many would argue that social enterprise is the ultimate sustainable organisation provided it can make money through its core operations. However this is where the argument gets a little tricky.

Most Social and non profit organisations are driven by individuals passionate about the cause, most are often skilled in the service delivery and unquestionably it is cause and not profit that drives them. Public funding schemes enable these organisations to establish themselves and provide the managers with the freedom to concentrate on delivering, however when the public funding starts to dry-up they are not supported in finding alternative income streams from the private sector.

If we all value and recognise the contribution the non profit and social sectors make to our society and economy and we believe these are organisations we can trust. Run by people who would rather give to society than take. Then we need to start supporting them in skilling up.

Lets enable them to be sustainable, to grow and become major employers. Hopefully then we will see a society that has more of the values that these passionate non profit social entrepreneurs demonstrate.

More private sector mentors into social enterprise sector is one thought.

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