Get in the habit of continually learning and developing your skills

By Walter Rogers
President and CEO
Baker Communication

The sales field is full of people who consider themselves to be experts. They have many years of experience and they have amassed a great amount of product knowledge. In spite of that, many of them consistently underperform, and in many cases this problem is caused by the fact that they believe themselves to be such experts that they don‘t feel any need to expand their skill sets or learn anything new. This not only leads to complacency, it also leads to the real possibility that they will be passed by others who constantly sharpen their skills and leverage new technologies to create advantages where others find obstacles. We call these other people "highly successful sales professionals."

In too many sales organizations, the focus of sales training begins and ends with product knowledge. Sales team members are required to become experts on every aspect of the products and the solution sets the company has to offer. The training program may also include some indoctrination into a sales process, but the sales process is too often seen as a vehicle for guiding any sales conversation back to a discussion of the products and solutions the sales professional wants to push. The problem with this approach to sales training is subtly deceptive, because it leads the sales professional to assume that selling is all about his products and solutions; all he has to do is find a way to convince the customer to think the same way.

This assumption is wrong. More than ever, the sales conversation must be focused on the needs the customer has, the outcomes he wants to achieve, and how the sales professional can help the customer achieve those outcomes. Especially given the present market conditions, customers will not stay in relationships with vendors who don‘t know how to uncover their needs and partner with them to find creative solutions that will deliver outcomes tailored to meet those specific needs. Customers are no longer just looking for someone who is an expert on products and solutions; customers today are looking for vendors who are willing to become experts on them and their business challenges.

Here is the problem even experienced sales professionals run into when they put their faith in their expertise. In his new book, How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer cites a research study done by U.C. Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock. Tetlock questioned 284 people who made their living "commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends," asking them to make predictions about future events. Over the course of the study, Tetlock collected quantitative data on over 82,000 predictions, as well as information from follow-up interviews with the subjects about the thought processes they'd used to come to those predictions.

His findings were surprising. Most of Tetlock's questions about the future events were put in the form of specific, multiple choice questions, with three possible answers. But for all their expertise, the pundits' predictions turned out to be correct less than 33% of the time. Which meant, as Lehrer puts it, that a "dart-throwing chimp" would have had a higher rate of success. Tetlock also found that the least accurate predictions were made by the most famous experts in the group.

Why was that? According to Lehrer,

"The central error diagnosed by Tetlock was the sin of certainty, which led the 'experts' to impose a top-down solution on their decision-making processes."

In other words, they considered themselves to be EXPERTS, so they didn‘t ask enough questions or do enough research to confirm their opinions.

Sales professionals are subject to making the same mistakes when they begin working with customers. Instead of making assumptions based on their "expertise," they should set their opinions aside for the moment and focus instead on the customer and do everything they can to gain a full understanding of the customer‘s situation. Unfortunately, any sales professional – and there are too many of them still in this category – whose training is product-centered, simply will not have the skills to effectively conduct customer-centered interactions. If they don‘t acquire these skills in a hurry, their productivity will soon enter into a steady decline.

The highly successful sales professional is able to adapt and grow in any market environment precisely because they aren‘t satisfied with their present level of competency, as useful as that may be. Instead, they constantly ask themselves two questions: 1) what do I need to learn that I don‘t know now, and 2) what do I need to do to be more effective? With these questions as a backdrop, here are a few principles sales professionals can follow to stay in the habit of learning and developing their skills:

Refine your ability to ask good questions and be a good listener in every situation: This is the best defense against the sin of certainty, but it is more powerful than you can imagine. Effective questioning skills can be used to open conversations, build rapport, identify needs, clarify desired outcomes, differentiate between options, uncover more needs, introduce proposed solutions, set up benefit statements, and test for agreement before closing. It is almost impossible to ask too many questions, and every answer has the potential for unlocking more opportunities. In addition to being experts on products, sales professionals should make a career-long effort to become experts at asking questions.

Read, read, and then read some more. Read as much as you can about trends and news of the industries into which you are selling. This is perhaps one of the most important and easiest professional development exercises a sales professional must engage in. Customers expect their sales representatives to know more about their industries than they do, not less. Customers don‘t want to educate you on industry or company trends, this is information that any sales professional must know. If you do nothing else, do this critical step.

Become a life-long student of the art of selling: Read books on sales effectiveness, participate in regular coaching with your sales manager, attend seminars and training events at least annually on sales effectiveness, and immerse yourself in the culture of sales effectiveness and transformation. NFL quarterbacks are among the highest paid and most respected players on their teams, yet they attend training camp right along with the rookies, and they take five times as many snaps during each practice as all the back-up quarterbacks combined. They do this not because they aren‘t good at what they do; they do it because they want to be the best at what they do and they know there is always room for improvement. The future success of the whole team depends on it.

Always be on the look-out for skill gaps – Just because you are pretty good at something doesn‘t mean that you shouldn‘t try to become even better at it. For instance, most top sellers report that they may rely on up to eight different closing techniques during the course of wrapping up a deal. If you only know three or four, and you are only really comfortable using two, what does that say about your chances of becoming much more productive? Fill the gaps and grow your business. As soon as you think you know everything, that‘s when trouble shows up. No one ever knows everything and there isn‘t a single person on this planet that can‘t improve or develop some area.

Become highly proficient at using technology – The Sales 2.0 revolution has rewritten the book on selling. Customers are now able to access almost as much information about your company and your products as you can, and they can definitely access what the blogs and customer ratings are saying about you. Your only defense is to become just as good, if not better, at leveraging technology to better prepare you to interact with customers.

• Leverage the resources of the Internet – First of all, this means using the wealth of information available on the Internet to do things like conduct research on specific companies and prospective accounts to learn as much as you can about them before you even make the first call. Customers are always impressed to learn that you cared enough to do your homework. However, these days you will also quickly lose credibility with busy executives by asking them basic questions that anyone with some initiative would have answered already by doing simple Internet research. Also, track what the blogs are saying about your company and your products, as well as what they are saying about your competitors. The Internet is also the best place to get a quick pulse for what is happening in the markets your customers are focused on, and help you spot trends so you can discuss them with your customer, and possibly help them prepare to address them.
   
• Become an enthusiastic adopter of CRM technology – Many sales professionals have a built in suspicion of their company‘s CRM because of the perception that is only used as a sales accounting tool, and thus a way to monitor their performance. A lot of companies have still failed to grasp the power of the CRM to drive revenue, but those who have are experiencing unprecedented increases in productivity because of the efficiencies and opportunities that can be leveraged through the CRM. Once you learn how to configure the CRM and enter and track activities, you will be able to do track things like:
   

• Lead conversion ratio
• Lead response time ratio
• Pipeline to revenue target ratio
• Year over year pipeline trend ratio
• Time per sales stage ratio
• Average Revenue per sale
• Account share ratio
• Account profitability ratio
• Year over year sales trend ratio
• Win-Loss ratio
• All contacts on every account opportunity
• Number and nature of interactions with each contact
• Marketing info pushed out and response to each
• The list is almost endless, and each action and activity allows you to be more responsive, more knowledgeable, and more able to deliver real value to your customers
   

The customers are more demanding than ever and the competition is better than ever; you can no longer rely on doing what you have always done and maybe just working at it harder. The burden is now on you to work smarter. Today, if you are not in the habit of continually learning and developing your skills, you are losing revenue and customers to the people who are. They are the ones we call highly successful sales professionals.

Action Items:

• How often do you find yourself approaching a customer feeling like you have a pretty good idea of exactly how the call is going to go? What can you do to guard against the sin of certainty?
   
• Do have a sales effectiveness improvement plan that pushes you to regularly grow and update your skills? If not, use the principles raised in this article to help you design one.
   
• Are the Internet and the CRM a major part of your strategy for working with customers? What can you do to make sure you are leveraging your CRM to the fullest to help you drive revenue?
  
  
   

Walter Rogers is the President and CEO of Baker Communications. Baker Communications is a sales training and development company specializing in helping client companies increase their sales and management effectiveness. He can be reached at 713-627-7700.

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