Superstar Sales: A 31-Day Plan to Motivate People, Build Rapport, and Close More Sales

Superstar Sales: A 31-Day Plan to Motivate People, Build Rapport, and Close More Sales

Superstar Sales: A 31-Day Plan to Motivate People, Build Rapport, and Close More Sales

Superstar Sales: A 31-Day Plan to Motivate People, Build Rapport, and Close More Sales

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Overview

Do you want to be more successful? Achieve record breaking sales? Make more money right now?

Are you committed to learning more about your customers and improving your skills and approach to helping them?

Salespeople are some of the least trusted professionals of any career. That’s an opportunity for you! By using this book as your guide, you can substantially differentiate yourself from your competition.

This 31-day book teaches the skills and habits of sales stars in bite-sized chunks you can learn and apply today. It challenges conventional sales thinking and leads you to a path of greatness.

Superstar Saleswill teach you:
  • A five-step selling model that focuses on the customer’s needs but also helps you win
  • An evaluation process to determine if you are among the best or the rest
  • How to capture and keep more business in a challenging market
  • How to deal with objections using the LEAD Model that lessens the stress for both you and your customers
  • The 10 competencies of a superstar leader
  • How to become a high-performing sales star and exceed your goals
  • And much more!

  • Product Details

    ISBN-13: 9781601635273
    Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
    Publication date: 05/20/2013
    Series: Superstar: A 31 Day Plan series
    Sold by: Barnes & Noble
    Format: eBook
    Pages: 224
    File size: 5 MB

    About the Author

    Rick Conlow is the CEO and cofounder of WCW Partners, a global management consulting and training firm. He has helped numerous companies like Target, Costco, Andersen Windows, and Canadian Linen reduce complaints, improve profits, and increase sales. Rick has been a general manager, vice president, training director, program director, and national sales trainer and consultant. He has authored 11 books, and regularly facilitates presentations to audiences of all sizes.

    Doug Watsabaugh is the COO and cofounder of WCW Partners. His knowledge of experiential learning and skill at designing change processes and learning events have enabled him to significantly improve the lives of thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations in various industries, including Coca Cola, Accenture, Hasbro, 3M, and General Mills. Doug is the author of seven books.

    Read an Excerpt

    CHAPTER 1

    Superstar Selling Assessment

    Effective selling requires strong and varied skills. It is an unforgiving profession in which the true professionals will survive and win, and the pretenders will get pushed out of the mix unceremoniously. As a reference point, let me (Doug) tell you a little bit about my golfing skills. I grew up on a farm in southern Iowa and was a decent-sized duck, athletically speaking, in a very small pond. I don't mean to overstate my athletic career; it's just that my high school was very small, and we competed in a conference that was made up of very small schools. I enjoyed sports and got to play (as did my classmates) on most sports teams.

    My community built a golf course when I was a sophomore in high school, so I thought it might be fun to learn how to play golf. I bought a basic set of clubs and went out a few times during the summers between high school and college. It's probably worth mentioning that I hit some golf balls in one of our pastures to "get the feel for it" before I went on the course. I didn't gain much skill in the game, but that didn't really matter to me because almost everyone else was playing at a similar level as I was. We were all friends, so it was good, low-pressure fun.

    Fast-forward a few years — after I graduated from college, after I was married, and after I had begun my career. Some of my colleagues invited me to play golf one spring weekend in Delaware, home of my new job. I had the same old set of golf clubs and had not played golf since I roamed the community golf course in southern Iowa. I knew that I was going to have a miserable time unless I sharpened up my skills before I joined them at the club. In all honesty, it is probably only fair to say that I embarrassed myself anyway on that golf outing — and on many more golf outings through the years — but here is my point: I discovered, in conversation with one of my colleagues, that the University of Delaware had a small practice course that they used for research and education purposes, and where you could go and hit golf balls as poorly as you wanted without interfering with anybody else's game. In other words, it was the city version of a cow pasture in southern Iowa.

    I spent several hours there practicing hitting my short irons. Then, I discovered that there was a small par-three course in my community as well, so that became my next step in my training to get ready to play golf with my colleagues. You can probably see where this is going, but I'll cut to the chase: Most of my practice centered on shots with my short irons. I became reasonably confident with my 9, 7, 5, and 3 irons. (I didn't have a full set of irons yet.) I had barely touched my driver and 3 wood. (I didn't have a full set of woods, either.) I also had minimal practice with my putter. And, I didn't own a sand wedge. If you are a golfer with even minimal experience, you know how poorly I played throughout that first spring and summer. You probably can also describe how I got into trouble, and the kinds of scores that I put up until I became more familiar with the game and gained some familiarity with the "tools." Decades have passed, and I enjoy the game, but am still not much more than a "weekend hacker." The game is unforgiving. It is dynamic, and you don't see the same challenge repeated during a round of golf. Your mistakes compound the difficulty of the game, and you can't fake it. Your true character and capability show up very quickly, and are apparent to every person who plays with you or watches you play.

    There are many parallels with professional sales. In sales, your professional skill set must be broad and deep. Your ability to "read" and understand complex and ever-changing requirements and conditions are a bar you must clear to even be in the game. Your skill set, your character, your temperament, and your creativity are all on display continuously. Each decision you make and step you take has an impact on the possibility you'll succeed or that you'll fail. With all of this happening and more, your ability to maintain your composure and lead your customer and your company to success is pressing on you each minute of each day. It is no small thing to be a successful, professional salesperson.

    As a sales professional, you have the opportunity and obligation to provide the highest quality products, services, and information to your customers. Notice that this assessment is customer-centered. Superstar salespeople are customer-focused, not self-focused. This requires a high degree of self-awareness, sales knowledge, and competence, and a good deal of organizational support and teamwork. The Superstar Selling Assessment is intended to help you self-assess and develop a plan to maximize your competence and your success. In order to build a solid foundation and to achieve better results, review what you do well and what you need to improve. Start by looking in the mirror.

    In the tables on the following three pages, indicate the degree to which you see yourself as fully competent in the sales behavior described in each question. A candid assessment of yourself is needed. Use the following scale:

    1 — Not at all

    2 — To a very small degree

    3 — To a small degree

    4 — To some degree

    5 — To a great degree

    6 — To a very great degree

    Then, add up the numbers in the "Total" line after each group of questions.

    Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.

    — Albert Einstein

    CHAPTER 2

    Superstar Sales Definitions and Assessment Scoring

    Sales professionals can be successful in a number of different ways. One may be particularly strong at establishing new account relationships. Another may be most effective at building trusting relationships and carefully understanding the needs and objectives of customers. And many others are highly knowledgeable about their products and services. Yet, research suggests that effective salespeople excel in several key areas. Superstar selling requires versatility, a strong skill set, and an unwavering commitment to customer-centered activity. Here are the 10 critical competencies that will spark success in your sales world.

    Customer-Centered Activity: approaching the sales relationship and focusing entirely on the customer's needs, wants, and expectations. A commitment to adjust behavior accordingly, communicate effectively, act ethically, read nonverbal cues, help customers achieve their goals, cater to the client's style and personality, and confirm that communication is properly understood during the entire buying process.

    Effective Sales-Call Planning: determining your position in the sales relationship, planning your sales activity sequence appropriately, generating profitable and mutually beneficial outcomes for you and your customers, managing your time and resources in ways that maximize their value, building effective business results for your customers, working collaboratively, and coordinating internal resources. Other skills include time-and-territory planning, individual sales-call planning, and annual strategic business planning.

    Building Customer Rapport: establishing rapport, making positive impressions, building trust, listening intently, creating a safe and constructive communication climate, building relationships with key decision-influencers, and connecting with your customers by using all communication tools at your disposal.

    Identifying Customer Needs: planning and executing discussions and meetings that enable you and your client to think through personal and professional needs in a way that results in a mutual realization of the best product or service solution that addresses the client's unmet and undefined needs. Asking appropriate questions, listening carefully, setting aside predetermined thoughts and solutions, learning, and raising the client's awareness of overlooked needs.

    Consulting With Clients: developing solutions to client problems, generating effective selling statements, demonstrating new products and processes, expressing yourself clearly, maintaining active dialogue in presentations, acting in a persuasive manner, presenting effectively to group audiences, using sales support effectively, and simplifying technical presentations.

    Addressing Customer Concerns: requesting feedback on your proposed solutions, expressing empathy for others, managing client resistance, dealing with interpersonal conflict, and repairing broken sales relationships. This competency involves skillfully applying the ability to generate dialogue and mutual involvement in the sales process with the customer, while competently working with the customer when she is frustrated, angry, or opposed to your solution.

    Finalizing Agreement: directing all sales activity toward specific outcomes. This competency also involves encouraging the customer to commit to using you and your products, demonstrating assertiveness during negotiations, asking for the business, and securing client commitments.

    Follow-Up and Follow-Through: maintaining sales relationships by using the telephone, sending appropriate and relevant correspondence to customers, reestablishing dormant account relationships, taking action, coordinating activities and outcomes within your company, keeping appropriate records, and increasing the focus on existing accounts.

    Leveraging Team and Organizational Support: functioning as an external/internal team member, effectively relating to sales-support personnel, taking prompt action during critical situations, and aligning activities to customer commitments and expectations.

    Emotional Resiliency and Peak Performance: maintaining proper life balance by handling rejection and stress appropriately, evaluating personal sales-call performance, and committing to ongoing learning and development.

    To summarize, outstanding sales professionals are consistently growing in each of these 10 competencies. You don't simply master one and then take it for granted. You keep polishing your skills and expanding your knowledge. As the old adage goes, life is a journey, not a destination. Establishing excellence in sales is a process that includes periodically taking inventory of your strengths and areas of improvement, and then taking action. We will cover each of these areas as they relate to the Superstar selling model. To begin, you need two things:

    1. A strong awareness of your abilities in each of these competencies.

    2. A plan to excel.

    Everyone lives by selling something.

    — Robert Louis

    Superstar Selling Assessment Score Sheet

    Transfer your scores from the Superstar Selling Assessment in Day 1 to the appropriate spaces here.

    SuperStar Selling Assessment Circumplex

    Scoring Instructions

    1. Plot your scores on the blank circumplex below by placing your numerical rating on the numbered scale within each dimension. Shade each dimension of your circumplex to create a graphic representation of your scores.

    2. Compare your scoring profile (image) to those presented below.

    Profile Review

    The following descriptions provide a series of profiles based on some common archetypal sales profiles. The data are presented on a circumplex, a tool deigned to highlight interpersonal data in three ways that we find useful for developmental purposes:

    1. Your score for each individual dimension of sales effectiveness is presented on a numerical scale that numerically and graphically provides perspective on the relative strength of that dimension. Lower on the scale indicates more need for development, and higher on the scale represents a higher level of skill.

    2. The interplay between the competencies also has an impact on the effect of your sales approach. The old phrase "like a hammer in search of a nail" highlights the reality that many of us rely so much on a skill or set of skills that we overuse or misuse those skills in a way that makes us less effective in a somewhat-predictable manner. This interplay and its result on your sales approach can be identified by asking: What is the effect of a high level of skill and utilization here, combined with less skill and use of this (particular) skill?

    3. The overall image or shape of our skills (via the circumplex) will provide a glimpse of your total development opportunity in a way that is not available simply by looking at the numerical representation. For example: Are you well-rounded in your competency set, or does your circumplex appear to be "jagged," meaning there are highs and lows to your overall approach? Are most of your skills in the "highly capable" range, or are many or most in the "development recommended" or "development needed" range?

    Review the scoring profiles and compare your scoring patterns to the archetypal descriptions provided along with each circumplex. It is not possible to describe every scoring image that might occur, so you may find a close approximation to yours or you may have to look for pattern similarities and read the description to best formulate your own competency description.

    Note: This tool is presented as a training aid, and not as an "assessment." By this, we mean that your scores are self reported and represent your viewpoint at a point in time. The intention here is to help you identify current strengths and development opportunities. Just as you can become a better golfer by identifying specific areas of your game for focused improvement and practice, so you can improve as a sales professional by choosing your areas of focus and going to work.

    The Visitor

    The visitor profile is represented by particularly high scores in building (and maintaining) rapport. The visitor's scores are often mid-range to high in follow-up and follow-through. The visitor's scores indicate that the relationship is of paramount importance, and the business development elements of the selling relationship receive far less effort and attention. Therefore, finalizing agreement scores are often low, as are scores in consulting with clients, the actual solution-generation portion of the sales process. Sales planning scores are relatively low, and customer focus is often in the mid-range because, although the salesperson focuses on the customer, most of the focus is centered on building and maintaining the relationship, with little or no focus on getting into the customer's viewpoint and generating strong business-producing solutions.

    The Presenter

    This archetype presents high scores on consulting with clients, and low- to mid-range scores on building and maintaining rapport and on follow-up and follow-through. They also often have lower scores on customer focus and low to mid-range on sales planning. Sales professionals with this profile place high value on understanding products and their features. They work very hard on making strong and forceful presentations to the customer. What gets left out in the process, however, is the connection to the customer's personal and business needs. As a result, the balance is lost between the business presentation and the business needs the solution should relate to. Presenters are often quite frustrated because they're certain that they present the best picture of the company and its products, and they can't understand why the customer isn't buying.

    The Interrogator

    The interrogator puts a great deal of emphasis on the questioning (investigative) aspects of the sales relationship. Exploring customer needs and understanding the business conditions that created them put the interrogator in position to present a solution that meets the customer's needs. Scores in identifying client needs have a tendency to be high on the circumplex. The presentation side (consulting with clients) will not be scored as high. There is always more information to gather and understand, and as a result, this profile can feel like the old metaphor "ready, aim, aim, aim, aim. ..." The customer may ultimately feel as though they have been turned inside out and examined, but there is never a solution or resolution. The interrogator may believe that he is building strong rapport, not realizing that the impact of his questioning can be to reduce trust and create distance in the relationship with the customer.

    (Continues…)


    Excerpted from "Superstar Sales"
    by .
    Copyright © 2013 Rick Conlow and Doug Watsabaugh.
    Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
    All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
    Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

    Table of Contents

    Preface 9

    Introduction: How Good Can You Be? 11

    How to Use This Book 15

    Day 1 Superstar Selling Assessment 19

    Day 2 Superstar Sales Definitions and Assessment Scoring 25

    Day 3 Warning: Pessimism Is Hazardous to Your Health! 43

    Day 4 The Superstar Selling Process 47

    Day 5 Strategic Sales Planning and Preparation 51

    Day 6 The Sales Potential Matrix and Prospecting for Profit 55

    Day 7 Buyer Roles, Decision Styles, and the Customer Buying Process 67

    Day 8 Sales Relationship Map 77

    Day 9 Strategic Sales Planning: SWOT Analysis 87

    Day 10 How to Be a Winner 97

    Day 11 Building Rapport 101

    Day 12 Identifying Needs 111

    Day 13 Presenting Solutions 119

    Day 14 Cut the Rope That Holds You Back! 127

    Day 15 Risk vs. Your Rewards 133

    Day 16 Addressing Customer Concerns 137

    Day 17 Overcoming Sales Resistance 147

    Day 18 The Secret Sauce of Selling 151

    Day 19 Closing the Sale 155

    Day 20 5 Ways to Increase Sales Today 163

    Day 21 The Greatest Closing Technique of All Time 167

    Day 22 Success Practices and Peak Performance 171

    Day 23 Best of the Best Exercise 175

    Day 24 Goal Achievement 177

    Day 25 Positive Affirmations 181

    Day 26 Mental Rehearsal 183

    Day 27 Superstar Customer Service 185

    Day 28 Team Selling 189

    Day 29 What Is Your Customers" Experience? 195

    Day 30 A Review: Superstar Selling Action Plan 199

    Day 31 Managing Time for Superstar Results 203

    Notes 211

    Index 213

    About the Authors 219

    About WCW Partners 223

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