“As a salesperson, hopefully, you are being coached. Either you’re a network, your buddies or manager, or just somehow get some support to help you think about doing stuff right” – Fred Copestake in today’s Tip 1656
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Fred Copestake. Fred is a bestselling author, trainer, and coach. In the last 23 years, he has worked in 36 countries and trained over 10,000 salespeople. His motto is that sales should be about ‘Good people, doing good things, in a good way’. Here he is:
Fred Copestake: Let’s have a look at what’s stopping people get results. This is what I’ve seen working with a bunch of companies and there’s quite a lot of commonality to it. Again, I’ll be direct on this. It’s to do with being ineffective, old-fashioned, and confused.
If salespeople are that, it’s unlikely that they’ll be achieving results. A model mindset. This is kind of where we get a bit of misalignment. It sort of happens at an organization and management and individual level and it.
Looks a bit like this, where organization, says, well, we’re consultative, we’re customer-focused, we’re buyer-centric, this is how we operate. Everyone’s like, yeah, good, great, we’ll want that. But then at the end of the month, it gets really transactional because it’s like, get out, sell this discount, need these numbers now.
And it’s a weird one, it’s a very weird one for people to deal with. The people have to deal with are the managers and they’re then now kind of, well, am I kind of motivating people here? Am I kind of carrot or am I stick? Am I like with a spreadsheet and looking at numbers here or am I trying to get them better at what they do? I really feel for people in this position, corporate a rock and a hard place because the impact on the salesperson the individual is just they are way confused.
So they get so frustrated and again, they end up wasting effort because they’re trying to work out what it is they’re supposed to do. I’ve taught some people and I’ve been coaching them and they’re just lost. It’s a horrible place for salesperson to be and we really don’t want this stuff.
And so the alignment piece, I mean, this stuff’s more for the sales leaders. It’s like if you are and you want to chat about this later, use the offer, I’ll give in a bit. But this is about having clarity to allow coaching and to give confirmation.
Now clarity. So this is how we sell, this is how we do it, this is our way and we’re going to stick by that. We’re going to stand to it.
Now, of course, sometimes we need to course correct a little bit to adapt to changes in the market and stuff, but really being consistent and not trying to change things and force sales at the end of the month, end of the quarter, that’s the stuff that’s doing salespeople. Then managers can focus on how they coach, they can support the salespeople, they can help them to get better.
As a salesperson, hopefully, you are being coached. Either you’re a network, your buddies or manager, or just somehow get some support to help you think about doing stuff right. Makes a big difference, because we want to know, as salespeople, we’re doing the right thing. Once we start getting confused and we’ve got losing confidence in ourselves, should I do this? Should I do this? Should I do this? It becomes a mess.
It’s amazing how much happier salespeople are when it’s dead clear to them what they should be doing. We tap into this intrinsic motivation of bouncing out and going, yeah, look, come on, let’s get this stuff done. The mistake that managers make is that kind of everyone knows the way. If it’s never been communicated, how should they? So make sure we’ve got the model that works.
Scott Ingram: To connect with Fred on LinkedIn and check out his Scorecard, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1656. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!