Changing Behavior

"Three billion people on the face of the earth go to bed hungry every night, but four billion people go to bed every night hungry for a simple word of encouragement and recognition."

-- Cavett Robert

 From Steve Chandler:

"The worst way to alter someone's behavior is to make them feel like they are doing something wrong.

If you tell them they're wrong to be drinking so much, they'll get upset, slam the door, go out and drink even more.  If you tell them they're lazy and not studying enough, they'll go to the couch and study even less.  If you tell them they don't listen to you, they'll listen even less.  (It's human nature to convert wrong into right.)

The other problem with trying to change other people is even more important. 

Even if they do change, they're still not happy.   

Let's say I've been trying to change some habit of yours for a long time.  In fact, I've convinced myself that my own happiness depends upon it, and now you've come home and surprised me by saying you've quit this habit of yours, and you're a changed person.  Am I happy now?  On the contrary. Now I'm even more nervous than before because I don't know whether I can trust this change.  In fact, all I can think about is, "How long is this going to last??"    

I have that horrible feeling that this is probably too good to be true.  I don't want to get my hopes up.  I don't want to set myself up for an even greater disappointment, so I end up losing sleep at night and bracing myself by day.

Any time my happiness depends on something you do or don't do, I'm lost because I'm looking for happiness in all the wrong places.  Happiness does not come from relationships.  When relationships are good, the happiness is brought to the relationship by two people who are already happy.  I can share my happiness with you, but I can't get my happiness from you.

The most destructive relationship illusion of all time is that other people can make us happy.  They can't.  However, our already existing happiness can increase by sharing it with another person."

Steve, as usual, is sharing knowledge here. The overlap of Truth and Beliefs. So let's take this a step further. How do you change the behavior of your employees if you can't do it by "managing them" - nagging, criticizing and pointing out the things they need to change?

Try these techniques - things great coaches do to ensure they have the best players in every position.

1. They coach, they don't manage - they know they need to focus on the person and helping them get better.
2. They coach in practice, not the game. The have 10-15 minute Weekly Coaching Conversations with their direct reports. Focus on the player - wins, focus, goals. How can I help you get better?
3. They praise the behavior they want to see 4 times more than they discuss the behaviors they don't want to see.
4. They stop answering questions - they have the employees come to them with their solutions, what they intend to do then discuss them.
5. They build a virtual bench of A Players, people who have other jobs but have been vetted by you and want to join your team. (They scout continuously and use the draft/free agency). Having this bench makes all "people issues" less stressful and more productive.

Spend 1-2 hours a week having your Weekly Coaching Conversations and another hour recruiting everywhere you go. 3 hours per week, busy "on purpose", will greatly reduce your stress and build a great company over time.

Sales Survey - What's Missing?

"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have." 

-- Emile Chartier, Philosopher

 

A recent survey of sales management worldwide, conducted by Qvidian, found the following regarding the issues surrounding growing their business and the struggles of their sales organization.

Sales people struggle with the following:

• Effectively Present Value
• Providing Content Specific to Selling Situation & Buyer Stage
• Differentiate From Competition
• Generating Winning Proposals and Personalized Selling Documents
• Clearly Understand Customer's Buying Process
• Identify and Gain Access to All Decision Makers
• Conducting Thorough Needs Analysis

Top Areas That Need Improvement

While all of these are essential, there is a common theme that continues to surface. Sales teams are burdened with complexity and follow up in the selling process, and struggle to present greater value to the customer, leading to the buyer not making a decision. Reasons why value is often not presented effectively include:

• Sales not leveraging selling content and resources specific to buyer needs in order to convey value.
• Content and resources often not aligned to buyer stages.
• Sales spending too much time searching for content and resources, leading to less time selling.
• Selling content goes unused creating wasted resource time creating more and more content.
• Opportunities are missed because of wasted resources and less time selling.

Wasteful Activities

This study also uncovered that the majority of organizations haven't identified the wasteful activities in the sales cycle, let alone the wasted energy from resources generating quality content and tools that never get utilized. Only 7% believed their organization was able to identity wasteful activities, while over 31% said they were not able to identify at all. When it comes to leveraging the mass arsenal of content and selling tools, a staggering 90% of selling content is never used in the selling process. Our studies show 58% of salespeople's time is spent on non-selling activities. 58%!!!!

Agility

The ability for most sales organizations to be agile and adapt to change also impacts overall sales execution. 47% report that their sales process is only somewhat or not at all adaptable to change in the buying process, and over 57% state their sales organization is only somewhat or not at all agile.

Finding needed resources or creating personalized selling documents remains an ongoing challenge for salespeople. Over 39% say they have a challenge with locating and tailoring personalized selling documents and 16% say it is overly difficult.

Opportunities

The reality is buyers have changed, selling processes are more complex, and sales teams have not transformed, making it more of a challenge to achieve the organization's desired business outcomes. With all of these challenges, increasing complexity in the selling process, and critical business objectives and defined strategies, companies have invested in a variety of areas to help support their sales teams.

Typical actions taken to resolve these challenges:

• More Training - However 87% of training content is forgotten within weeks
• More Content - 70% of buyers are halfway in their buying decision before content is presented
• More Sales Reps - It is hard to find more great salespeople and 58% of the time is not spent selling

The Solution

One solution that is working for my clients is the move to fewer sales people, keeping the best and teaming them with sales coordinators. This is LESS BUT BETTER. A sales coordinator teamed with a great salesperson can more than double sales at ¾ the cost of two salespeople. One company had 5 salespeople - they moved to 2 salespeople and 2 sales coordinators and doubled their sales overall!

How is that possible? When you take a great salesperson and ask them to spend 58% of their time doing non-sales activities what do you expect? The more they prospect, the more follow up they have to do, and the less they prospect the next week. The more customers they converse with, the more follow up they have to do, meaning less conversations the next week.

 

With a sales coordinator working as a teammate, all of the non-sales follow up, quotes, letters, reporting, CRM input, appointment making etc. is taken care of by the coordinator and the salesperson's job becomes 90% sales conversations and developing relationships. This is what they are good at and why they were hired in the first place.

It also provides solutions to the issues in the survey above. Ensuring content and sales and marketing tools are being effectively used. The coordinator becomes the expert and ensures the salesperson has the right tools in hand on each call.

For more info see this flow chart -- it is an example of how the process might work in your company. 

For more information on this concept please feel free to contact me.

Fund Your "Remarkable" Company

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."  

- George Bernard Shaw

The single best lead generator for our businesses are referrals or word of mouth. The key to more word of mouth is "remarkable" experiences (i.e. experiences with our company that are remarkable).

How much do you trust your people to do the right thing? After all, they are the ones that provide these remarkable experiences. We talk about it, but has it been communicated?

Seth Godin sent this recently:

"Consider giving every person on your team a budget - $1000 a year? $200 an incident? - and challenging them to spend the money to make things right, to create efficiency, to delight.

If the CFO freaks out, invite her to meet with each employee at the end of the year to hear how they chose to spend the money. A free part or service. Giving an unhappy customer a refund on the spot. Buying a subscription to an inexpensive web app that dramatically decreases customer service time...

At the Ritz-Carlton, every single employee (even the maintenance folks) has a budget of $2,000 per guest to make things right. On the spot, without asking.

Without a doubt, the guest is blown away by this rapid response. A caring person who, instead of saying, "I'll have to ask my supervisor," just makes it right. But even more important, I think, is the effect of trusting your people. You've already given them the keys to your brand, you've already made them the face of your organization - isn't it time to trust them enough to do the right thing?"

Do you have the right people, doing the right things , right? Can you say YES to all these?

Regards,  

Rick Wallace

Referrals - Knowledge Not Lies

"Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again

 and bring their friends."

- Walt Disney

We all know referrals are one of our top sources of leads.

 

Self-limiting beliefs, though, say the key is asking for them and giving something (payment) to our customer for giving us the referral. This belief is not true.

Truths/Belief and thus Knowledge:

1. People will only refer you if you do "remarkable" things for them - not because they are paid something.
2. People refer because they want to. They want to help you, they want to help the friend they refer you to and they want to feel smart. (They know something others don't.)
3. People usually only refer when the time is right, it comes up in a conversation, they see someone and it is on their mind, etc.
4. People don't refer because you pay them or give them something. It is ok to thank them with a gift, but that is not the key to getting people to refer you, and if not done right can cheapen the experience.
5. People fear referring because they worry about what you will do with the referee. (i.e., bug them to death to buy from you, not serve the referee the way you served them, etc.) 

Thus a great referral program must:

1. Serve your customers with "remarkable service".
2. Ensure the customer that their referee will be treated well and served (not bugged to buy something).
3. Make it easy to make the referral  now - not when the time is right and easy for the sales rep to ask for the referral.
4. Give the customer something of value to gift to the referee. It is the catalyst to make the referral now and the thing that ensures the customer knows what will happen next (no bugging to buy) and allows them to offer something of value to the referee.
5. This "gift" should be something that allows you to serve the referee and demonstrate your difference.
6. Yes keep the customer in the loop let them know what is happening (they want to know how it went and reinforce the good decision they made to refer someone). It also gives you a chance to ask for another referral.
7. It is ok to send them a little thank you or gift but as a surprise not as the quid pro quo - you do this I'll do this.

My suggestion:

1. Coupon or gift certificate with a place for the customer's name on it - "This gift is for you from ______________ ".
2. A pain statement your ideal customers/prospects have.
3. This certificate entitles you to a FREE service you can provide that will demonstrate how you are different from your competitiors and have value and helps solve their pain.
4. Sales rep gives it to customers to pass on or, better still, ask the customer for the information and say I'll deliver this in person for you - nice envelope, nice certificate and nice gift.

Regards,  
Rick Wallace