Never, ever, ever pitch or sell in a voicemail. Odds are, you’ll never hear from the contact again.
So, why leave a voicemail? Well, good voicemails can lead to 3-5x more returned calls (vs. bad or no voicemails). That means that if you leave 10 voicemails every day, I promise you’ll get 3-5 more calls returned. That might not sound like great odds, but those are 3-5 more conversations that you weren’t getting before.
(Psst! Take our sales training course, Messages That Get Returned, to help you craft winning voicemails.)
So, set your call goals, take the time to craft a really strong voicemail, leave it every time, and put those notes in your CRM so you know which voicemail you left.
There’s no better way to build phone confidence than to see it work and actually get prospects and customers to call you back.
Watch the video below to see LB break down the 4 goals for leaving a sales voicemail.
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My first year in sales management was rough. I try hard to celebrate that sweet, young thing instead of cringing, but it’s hard some days. I remember some doozy mistakes:
Motivating over email. I had 2 reps on my new team that hit the end of their ramp and went against quota before anyone else. Chris and Melissa (no kidding, 23 years later). I thought they might need some boosting, and I never saw them as they sat way on the other side of the office as I did. So I sat down and crafted a long letter.
Go. team.
There were so many things wrong with that email!
Shall we talk about coaching? I was terrified. To be clear, I had no experience selling what they were selling, no experience managing, and had never call coached in my life. Yeah, saying I avoided it like the plague would be an understatement. Except for my tenured guy, Noonan. I always tried to coach with him because I’d learn something. Guess who REALLY didn’t want my novice help? (he’d applied for my job)
Bingo.
Meeting management. Looking back I think I managed everything ad-hoc except for our team meetings. Those would go on for HOURS because I crammed everything into one. I’d prepare for DAYS. I’d still go long. THEN the guest speaker would come in.
Nightmare.
Yeah, these are real stories. It took me about six months to figure out the job and for my team to excel. And we did. We became number one in the division in those 6 months. Most days I think they did it in spite of me! And because I still feel the embarrassment, frustration, and exhaustion in my body as I type this, I’ve spent my career trying to fix it for others.
Factor 8 management curriculum is literally job training for sales managers. Not leadership training with a few sales role-plays, it’s how to do the freaking job. Like I wish someone would have taught me. It’s one of the key 3 ingredients in the over 100+ promotions we’ve earned with our #GirlsClub communities! Here are a few nuggets we teach and share. If you’re a new manager or an aspiring one, I hope you’ll take one (or a few) of our online management courses or programs. They’re bite-sized versions of our Fortune 1000 corporate programs.
Tip 1:
Get your house in order. A manager’s cadence is akin to a rep’s sales process. It’s the dance steps, the framework, the skeleton on which you’ll hang your management suit. Get it locked down. We teach about six essential manager meetings:
The performance 1:1
The sales huddle
The quarterly review
The team pipeline meeting
The sales strategy meeting
The team meeting
Each of these has different goals, timelines, and preparation actions, but once you lock these in you’re halfway home to getting a hold of your day. If you’d like to see your family or some daylight hours during your first year, believe me, this is key!
Tip 2:
Delegate everything you can to these meetings. Keep the line away from your desk and work through needs in their appropriate meeting. It’s like getting file folders for all the crap on your desk. Be clear:
Sales Reps are like water. We will ALWAYS flow to the path of least resistance.
Asking you to help or do it for me will always be easier than me looking it up or figuring it out. Resist, dear friend, resist. Fish. Teaching. Eating. You get it, right? Remember, daylight hours! When we spend all day with a “line at our desk” (remote equivalent: Slack blowing up), we feel GREAT we helped people all day and we had some answers, but then we get to keep working all night to do our real job.
Tip 3:
Get really clear on your job role. You’re going to WANT to solve everything for your team because this validates you. We all feel nervous in these new roles and it’s hard to immediately strike the right balance of power. New leaders are either baby tyrants or mother hens. Leading through telling or leading through helping. Find the middle ground. On two sides of the paper, fill them up. Now you know what NOT to do.
Tip 4:
Stop doing your old job. The Peter principle is a real thing. It means you’ll keep getting promoted until you reach your limit of competence. Translated, that means until you quit learning the new job and we find you still doing your old job. Don’t fizzle out at the first leadership rung. No, you can’t keep any accounts. No! Uh-uh! Zip! None. Give it to a rep on your team and help them be great instead.
Tip 5:
Celebrate failures and wins. Every week come together as a team to talk about the week’s highlights. It keeps you all focused on the W’s, motivated to do it again, and builds unity. Keep it short, but be sure it also includes failures. The best sellers and managers see sales as a sport in which they’ll continuously improve. That means failing. No’s. Lost deals. Hang-ups. For you it means upset. Missed opportunities. Stepping in it with your boss. Share these with your team too. If you can vulnerably share your journey to being the best leader you can be for them, they’ll cheer you on your journey.
So will I.
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I’ve heard from many sales leaders lately that it’s tough getting the next generation of sellers to pick up the phone.
We all know that no one wants to make cold calls, but the endless email and InMail touches and cadences that your reps are using aren’t working.
And, with the new Gmail and Yahoo email restrictions that kicked in this year, it’s more important than ever to go back to basics and get new sellers to pick up the phone.
At Factor 8, we’re focused on teaching reps tactical phone sales skills to help them build sales confidence (so they’ll pick up the phone AND feel great about it!)
When you’re bringing on someone new – especially when they’re remote – one of the most important things you can do in new hire onboarding is use call recordings.
The game has changed over the past few years. When sellers are remote, they can’t just sit next to their peers, hear what’s happening, and learn the good, bad, and ugly.
If your company doesn’t record calls, or you’re worried about not having a specific rep’s call recordings, toss that – it doesn’t matter. You can learn so much from any call recording.
In fact, at Factor 8 in our Sales Bar, our online sales training platform, we have thousands of user-submitted recorded sales calls from all different industries, organized by skill (i.e. call intro, overcoming objections, call bridging, closing, etc.)
During onboarding, break down the call and let reps listen to what it sounds like, even if it’s not a good call, because what we’re scared of is what the customer is going to say to us (and the inability to think on our feet to respond to them intelligently).
When reps hear different scenarios on sales calls 20 or 30 times, they begin to feel comfortable and that fear starts to go away and the confidence rises.
And that’s the name of the game, folks: confidence. You’ve got to have it to succeed in sales, and building it begins at onboarding.
Need help building sales confidence in your sales reps? Email me at LB@factor8.com. I’m happy to help!
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If you’re a BDR or SDR, you’ve probably heard your fair share of sales objections. And chances are, you’re likely NOT a big fan of them. I’m here to change your mind. Why?
I LOVE objections.
They’re proof a prospect is actually listening, and at some level, they’re even considering buying. I see objections as a challenge to understand prospects better and to showcase the SWIIFT℠ value of my product.
Ready to love objections? Let’s get started.
First, let’s understand the difference between a brush-off and a sales objection. If you’re hearing things like “I can’t talk right now” or “I’m not interested,” what the person on the other end of the phone is really saying is “I’d rather be doing anything than be sold to right now.” In these cases, you are experiencing a brush-off. These are typically heard at the beginning of the call and have almost nothing to do with your product or solution. Brush-offs require their own set of solutions, we’ll get to those in another article.
On the other hand, an objection sounds like “we don’t have a budget for XYZ” or “it’s too expensive” or “this isn’t our top priority.” Prospects with true objections are informed. They know who you are and what you are selling. Their objection is directly related to what you have presented to them (i.e. “We don’t have room in our 2022 budget for XYZ right now”).
Now that we understand the type of push-back that we’re solving for, let’s talk about overcoming objections in sales. Think about sales objections in terms of dating. You’ve poured your heart (your “pitch”) out to this potential customer and they’re quickly trying to show you the door. It’s only natural for us to take it personally. But let’s think about it this way, would you rather hear why a prospect is rejecting you, or be ghosted and left wondering why you weren’t a great fit? If you’re anything like me, you need to know “why?!”
So, let’s go over the 4 easy steps to sales objection handling so you can find both a solution and the answer to that “why?!”
SPOILER ALERT: Most sales reps only follow one step and the majority are unsuccessful! The most important thing to successfully handle an objection is to complete ALL 4 steps!
#1 Acknowledge
When you first hear an objection, you and your prospect are like two people on opposing sides of the table. You need to move to the same side in order to work together. Start by listening closely to what your prospect is saying to help identify the truth behind the objection and to LOWER defensiveness. Be sure to use your active listening skills here, folks. Nodding your head saying “mmhmm” or “I get that” are all useful cues to let them know you hear them. Go a step further by rephrasing their objection to show that you were truly listening to their thoughts.
Skipping this first step will leave you sounding defensive to someone whose guard is already up. That is not a recipe for success. So, let’s listen and acknowledge before moving to step 2.
#2 Ask Questions
The end goal of this step is to truly understand the prospect’s objection. Often, the initial objection is superficial. So, let’s use questions to isolate and clarify before we attempt to handle it. Taking a breath and approaching the questions with a calm tone can really help as well. Below are a few examples of defensive questions vs. calm, open-ended questions.
“What do you mean by that?” vs. “Sure, I get it, tell me more?”
“How could you say we’re too expensive?” vs. “I totally understand. Can you explain more about the cost?”
“You honestly think you don’t need this?” vs. “I hear you. So, what’s your solution to this problem?”
The most important part about this step is asking questions until you fully understand what the roadblock is.
#3 Overcome!
This is the step that most salespeople jump to. Reminder: If you skip steps 1 and 2, you are very likely not getting to the root of their objection and are coming off as defensive. This will lead to an aggravated prospect who will likely hang up on you.
Now let’s talk about addressing the true objection and providing a solution. After years of handling objections, we have found three tactics that show proven results!
Value:
Find the SWIIFT℠ value that the client’s objection embodies and use it to explain how your solution will overcome the objection at hand. (New here? Don’t know about the SWIIFT℠ values, yet? Check out the details HERE)
Money Example: “You know, if we implement this right now, our solution will help save about five times this investment! And that’s just in the first year. Our projections estimate at least $50k in savings right off the bat! I know it’s scary, but the savings are worth it!”
Felt/Found:
This tactic explains the cause and effect of your solution in the context of a previous client or clients.
Example: “I get it. Honestly? At least half of my current customers have FELT this way. It’s scary to invest upfront. But, what each of them has FOUND is that the cost savings more than make up for it – and does so quickly!”
Story:
This is similar to the Felt/Found tactic but goes into more detail. It’s important to remember that this can be a true story that happened to you or one of your co-workers, it could be a story pulled from a research report (with the names and details adjusted to your specific company), or it could be a story based in truth, with a few exaggerations.
Example: “I get it. It’s a totally normal reaction. You know from the beginning, you’ve reminded me of Bob from Spokane. He was shopping for the same solution – although he picked the XYZ model. He hesitated to pull the trigger too, and he has already recouped 75% of his original investment. That was literally just last month!”
When you’re sharing a story with a prospect, remember that good stories have these components:
Time
Place
Main Character
Challenge
Goal
Series of Events (aka Plot)
Outcome
Details (1-2 fun embellishments or random details)
Insider Tip: facts are 20 TIMES more likely to be remembered when they are part of a story! Stories release dopamine to the brain. Which, in turn, causes a deeper sense of emotional engagement with what is said. The brain automatically goes into curiosity and receptive mode (instead of defensive mode). Cool, right!? So, get your clients to drop their guard a bit with a good story!
In this step, you’ve got to confirm that you’ve answered your prospect’s questions and concerns. After confirming, we push the deal forward to either the next steps or to a close. Only about 10% of customers will close themselves. This means 90% of deals will stall out if you skip this step! Check out the image below to see 5 different types of closes. Which one feels the most comfortable for you?
BONUS! Here are a few additional tips to use after you’ve mastered the 4 steps above:
Always run through the proposal live with your client. If you are only emailing a quote you will lose a larger percentage of business.
If you are getting pricing objections from a lot of clients, you are probably selling on features only. You’ve got to include those SWIIFT℠ values!
If you don’t know which questions to ask, then remove the objection. Example: “Suppose you didn’t have ______? How would the situation be different?”
If you don’t know what to ask, then ask “why”? Example: “I’m sorry to hear you feel that way. I would like to understand your concern. May I ask why you say that?”
If you master the 4 steps above, you’ll find those sales objections turning into deals in no time!
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Sales discovery questions are drastically different from pipeline discovery questions. In fact, you should never use pipeline questions with a prospect.
Why? Because prospects are somewhere between cold and lukewarm. They’re not eager to be there and they’ve made no commitments about their time nor attention. Therefore prospect questions are being asked on tight timelines and to someone resistant to being sold. It’s like throwing balls at someone with their eyes closed and getting them to catch one in under thirty seconds (be clear, they don’t want to play).
Pipeline discovery is with someone who has already agreed to a meeting and shown some level of willingness to learn more. We’re talking lukewarm to hot. OK, now we have a shot of really playing some catch! We’ve booked 30-60 minutes and they’ve agreed to play ball!
So how should we change our discovery questions accordingly? Let’s stay in our game. If you have a minute to win it by getting a “catch” with an unwilling participant, lob easy balls that aren’t too painful when they hit – like ping pong balls. Fast, light, not too painful.
A willing catch partner will tolerate something weightier like a baseball, basketball, or even a bowling ball! They’re ready to catch and they may even be impressed with the ball you throw.
Wait. What? A bowling ball question? Yeah, you know, the big ones. “What’s it costing you to leave this unsolved?” or “What’s the worst-case scenario if this goes wrong?” The heavy stuff.
Prospect ping pong questions are light, easy, and non-threatening. Some are probably your sales qualification questions. Their short answer, rote answer, and easy answer. “How many reps do you have?” “What are you using now?” “What do you like about it?” “I can handle these no problem!”
Ever seen the guys in airports trying to sell travel credit cards from a kiosk? Most of them are yelling benefits like “10,000 free miles!” or “Free travel!” It’s not unlike most sellers. They’re billboarding instead of engaging. They could (and maybe should) literally be replaced by a sign. A sign may actually do better because we’re not afraid of being pitched by a sign.
Wouldn’t they do better if they asked engaging questions and got us into a conversation instead? Ping pong questions like, “Fun trip or work trip today?”“Headed to the beach?” “Is today the Hawaii trip!?”
These are non-threatening, right? Maybe they’re obvious (is she wearing vacation clothes?) or even funny (is he wearing a suit?). Point is, they get me to answer, maybe even smile. I’d lower my defenses and engage. Now you follow up with a better question like, “Where do you WISH you were going?” or “So, what’s next on the bucket list?” and now I’m in a conversation about desired travel. Soon we’ll be swapping stories and practically smelling the coconut oil…
Now if they threw bowling balls they wouldn’t get too far. Questions like, “What’s the APR on your current card!?” “How many free trips did you earn last year?” “Would you like to earn free miles on every flight?” OK, maybe these aren’t as heavy as bowling, but each requires some thought on my part, right? Each screams sales pitch coming!?
Ping pongs are non-threatening, non-sales questions. Perfect for prospecting.
Bowling balls are obvious sales questions and/or cost me more effort to answer. Yuck.
So stop leading with the bowling balls friends! If you’re a student of Factor 8’s SWIIFT℠ Intro, you’ll remember that the secret sauce is the SWIIFT℠ Questions at the end. These closed questions get prospects talking before they realize it and now you’re on first base with a conversation. NOW you graduate up to baseballs for second base and round home with the bowling balls. Admittedly my metaphors need work.
So reframe how you approach prospecting discovery. Prospecting questions have 3 very clear goals:
Get me talking
Make a connection and build some rapport
Find a teeny tiny edge (P.A.I.N – problems, avoidance, improvements, and newness)
Pipeline questions have very clear goals as well:
Find a need, challenge, or opportunity to improve
Uncover what the customer’s values are
Prove I can be a match better than others
Pipeline questions will dig deeply into priorities, challenges, preferences, competition, and experiences. These are not going to help someone with their eyes closed decide to play ball with you. Unless they’re actively looking for your solution right now, your superbly crafted pipeline questions will simply guarantee I keep my head down and rush for my flight. So keep it light and save pipeline questions for pipeline prospects.
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In all my years of sales leadership, there has never been a sales coaching emergency. You? Ever gotten a call after hours along the lines of:
“Panic! They don’t know how to…!! Help!?”
Exactly. And this is actually why, despite all our good intentions, there are precious few true coaching cultures in sales organizations. Even though we know the benefits – coaching skills that exceed expectations result in 94.8% of reps meeting quota and a top demand from the Millennials and Gen Zs you’re trying to hire (source: like every study published in the past five years).
Since there ARE sales emergencies, customer emergencies, product emergencies, and political emergencies every single day (and the non-emergent intentions), it’s no surprise that meetings get pushed to the bottom.
If you’re a sales leader, the most important place you can start is by assessing your current culture of development and sales coaching importance. Here are a few questions to get you started:
How often are my managers scheduled to call coach? How often do they really?
What is coaching more important than? ($1M deal?) What is it not? (reporting request?)
How eager are reps and managers for coaching sessions?
Are we hiding or celebrating fails?
Are reps getting built up or brought down?
The goal here is to determine if you have enough coaching, the right kind of coaching, and the kind of culture that supports it.
Starting with question 1, you may be surprised to learn that nearly 50% of reps disagree that they’re getting as much coaching as their managers state. Some of this is due to canceled or pushed coaching when fires happen (and let’s be honest, they happen daily in sales). I think the root of the problem here is how we define coaching. Most managers believe they’re coaching during a 1:1 meeting, a “how’s it going” chat, or a pipeline/deal conversation. Sorry…
“That’s NOT coaching!”
Our definition of best-in-class coaching is:
Sales meeting is present (ride-along, recorded call, live video meeting)
Manager asks questions about the reps’ skill
Rep receives custom feedback on their execution
Rep leaves feeling more confident than when they walked in
Sadly, this means that if you’re playing a call at a team meeting (great job by the way), this is sales training, not sales coaching. At most, you can provide custom feedback on a rep’s skills for about 3 people and 3 short call recordings in an hour. Yes, it also means that giving someone a laundry list of what to improve also doesn’t count as coaching. That’s just bullying. Inspect some sessions. You’ll be surprised – and you’ll be showing coaching’s importance with your presence.
Sales Executive Council also tells us that call coaching (aka skill coaching) is sales managers’ #1 worst skill. I’ve been hiring and training sales managers for 20 years and I wholeheartedly agree. And the hardest skill to shift is the laundry list of improvement items. It’s so easy for us to hear the challenges, and so hard for us to resist giving just one more idea for improvement. 90% of sessions during role plays come off negative at first, and it takes us at LEAST three training and practice sessions to start to even this out.
Like most leaders who came up through sales, I’m 100% guilty of the coaching bully myself. In fact, as we train sales managers how to coach at Factor 8, I modeled the curriculum after all my own personal atrocities. “Be like me…I do all the talking…Debbie Downer…” You get the picture. If you relate to this, you’ve probably also taken over a call or two you were meant to be silently observing.
That’s why I only coach recordings now. I just can’t be trusted during a live call. It’s also led to my #1 tip for antsy sales coaches:
“Coach the rep, not the deal.”
When we approach coaching with the intent of building confidence and skill vs. saving the deal, everything changes. Imagine the deal already lost. Resist the temptation to even ask about the outcome. Focus instead on engaging this seller, and helping them love their job, love their company, love their manager, and love sales.
It changes everything.
A note on culture. Spend a minute Googling the concept of a “growth mindset.” It’s our ultimate goal for sales coaching cultures. It’s a magical land where everyone cares more about improvement than winning. Did you just laugh out loud, my sales leader friend? Before you dismiss it, realize it’s the calling card of nearly every great athlete, and imagine if all your “A” players just kept getting better. How do you get here? A few ideas:
Weed out your problem leaders. Yeah, the person you pictured is exactly who I’m talking about. They probably have veteran reps and accounts and are a fixture in your org – like a barnacle on the underside of the boat, they aren’t uplifters. Just note: culture is formed not by your intent! It’s defined by the worst behavior you’re willing to tolerate. His name was Brian at my first sales management job, and his attitude led the whole division to a culture of hazing and sink or swim. NOT the coaching culture the new workforce is craving!
Share your failures and encourage your managers to do the same. A coaching culture is one where we’re not afraid to fail. We willingly share bad calls. We welcome feedback and input. Sorry, but humans aren’t built to be vulnerable and they will need a lot of role modeling here until your people feel safe to do so.
Reward improvement. If you want a growth mindset culture, you can’t just reward the winners. Find ways every month to celebrate improvement. Could be a metrics jump, a KPI improvement, skill gains, CSAT ratings…you get it.
A final word of advice: over-correct. My first Sales Director job came on the heels of me launching a training department. There was no other sales leader as dedicated to developing people as I was. It still took me 6 months in the new gig to start talking about and prioritizing training. So I get how hard it is and how busy everyone is and how many emergencies keep coaching at the bottom of the to-do list. So, if it’s your goal, you’ll need to triple down to shift the pendulum. Dedicate six months to overdoing it. Talk about it in every team meeting and all-hands. Drop into coaching sessions and coach the coaches. Reward top coaches and rep improvements. Add it to contests. Ask your manager for skill trends in every meeting. Spend money on sales manager training. Be sure it is OVER represented in your calendar, your budget, and your voice for long enough that your team knows it isn’t a flavor of the month.
Got a tip? Drop me a line and let me know what’s worked for you! lb@factor8.com.
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Working with newly-promoted sales managers may be my very favorite thing. Maybe that’s because the pain I remember in their position is still a bit fresh (albeit over 20 years old…)
The transition from rep to manager is tough. It’s also risky for both the company and the new manager. Companies lose top-performing reps and serial high-achievers sign on to feel NOT successful for a good six months. I’ve seen some sad stories of new managers flailing, flat-lining growth, or simply quitting in their first year. It’s sad for the manager and it’s a double loss for the company. They lose a manager AND top performer.
So how do we support and develop new sales managers to help them feel more successful sooner?
1. Talk in detail about the expectations of the new job.
Top reps are competitive, self-centered, and aggressive (said with love, folks). Margaret Arakawa said it best in a panel once. I paraphrase, “Moving from top rep to manager is like leaving the role of the lead actress on stage to become an executive producer.”
Most new managers talk to me about their utter disappointment in their first year. Not with the job (exclusively) but with their team. They aren’t used to relating to reps who aren’t as dedicated and passionate as they were. Help them see that this is normal and talk about strategies for dealing with the frustration.
Ultimately the buck stops with them and their success is getting the most consistent and high-level performance from these people. Set some expectations! For example, talk about how a sales manager’s success is judged not just by the number but also by:
Reduced time for new hires to hit quota
Percent of the entire team to quota – not just overall percent
Reduced attrition
Rep promotions
Each of these requires a focus on the people, their success, and their development. Sure we want managers focused on the “W,” but it needs to be a Team W, not their personal commission check. Hearing this advice from a leader they respect can help them focus on the right things early and find new ways to get daily wins.
3. Go beyond HR
If you’re lucky, managers have access to some generic management skills about communicating with others, approving timecards, giving feedback, etc. Helpful stuff. Not job training. Get them sales management skills like:
The management cadence: what meetings they need on their calendar and how often.
Time management for sales managers: Which is first? The line at your desk? The upset customer? The request for a report from the boss or the deal discount to close a sale? This skill will make or break a new leader. Prevent burnout before it happens!
Translating sales goals and driving sales performance: New managers struggle to get beyond managing activity. Help them learn to translate strategy and the big number into monthly, weekly, and daily activities for reps.
Performance 1:1 meetings: Help managers communicate the goal, the performance to date, motivate reps to succeed, and build relationships with their teams during this meeting.
Call coaching: Call coaching isn’t natural behavior for high-achievers. It takes an extreme amount of patience, customer focus, and a set process to be successful. Without skill training on coaching, they’ll either skip it or maybe even demotivate their team. Help teach them to do it right before they wind up a statistic.
Find them a mentor: A mentor becomes a safe space to vent, ask questions they’re afraid to ask their Director, and frankly a lifeline. And if you’ve promoted a woman, work to find her a female mentor. Yes, it does make a difference. #GirlsClub can help here if you’re lacking female sales leadership talent.
One of the hardest parts about being a manager is mastering the art of time management and being able to carve out time for everyone – for yourself, for your team, for your boss, for your career. How much? How often? Who’s first?
All too often the answer is us last. We’re so focused on proving ourselves to our team and our peers (and yes, to our boss, and maybe most of all to ourselves). We go in early, we log on late, we try to answer questions immediately and if we can’t we vow to get the answer and we do it.
Spoiler alert: this isn’t the answer. This is what made you an amazing rep. Your customers and prospects were your team and you made commitments and kept them. Like so many top rep skills, they won’t make you a top manager.
Tip #1: The goal is to get to the end of a workday with as little on your list as possible. That’s right leaders of leaders, managers, or superstars, You. Don’t. Own. it. And if you do, you shouldn’t.
Here’s my favorite line for busy front-line leaders:
Rep: Hey boss, got a second, I need to tell you about…
You: Sure. I have 2 minutes right now or 30 minutes in our 1:1 next week.
Tip #2: Top managers have a set cadence of rep interactions. They’re never longer than a week away from a pre-planned interaction to talk about performance, pipeline, strategy, or career. And all the interruptions in between? Neatly pushed into a meeting or delegated away.
Can you picture it? Like a duck gliding on the water – because all the hard work’s been done setting up the pond. My metaphors are getting a bit ridiculous, so let’s cut to the chase.
Best-in-class onboarding (or new hire training) programs go well beyond the standard “Welcome to the company” orientation and dive into actual job training. But most programs stop after introducing reps to their new systems and products. This leaves reps on their own to figure out things like:
What do I do first?
How do I get people to call me back?
What do I say if they ask me X?
The result? Long ramp times, while they use experience to supplement what they could have been taught.
There will always be a ramp period. Our goal is to shorten it. Awesome new hire programs have been proven to cut new hire ramp-to-target in half (Training Magazine).
What is the right ramp time? Sorry for this, but it depends – on the talent you’re hiring, your training program, and the complexity of your offering and sales cycle. But here are a few basic benchmarks:
If your deals aren’t over $200K, your sales cycle is over 6 months, and it’s taking your reps 6+ months to hit quota, your program probably needs some help.
I’ve been building and benchmarking new hire programs for the past fifteen years, and there are very few who don’t need help. Why?
Most onboarding programs need help because trainers don’t get sales, and sellers don’t usually get training – it’s a sandbox thing.
A great program is a killer combination of both worlds. Incidentally, a great program can also shrink your rep attrition. Keep them longer, ramp them faster = this is worth your investment, sales leaders!
Here are eight signs of a world-class rep onboarding program (that you should steal immediately!)
1. Training is a process, not an event.
Think of it as “Just-in-time training.” 100% classroom time is 1-2 weeks and then decreases gradually to once a month.
For example, a new hire is in full-time training for 2 weeks, but by week 4 they’re in class 2 hours a day, and in week six 1 hour a day. By week 8 it’s one hour a week and by month three (and for the rest of their tenure!) they’re in training once a month.
This makes it critical to focus their first two weeks only on what they’ll need in month one on the phone. Why? They’ll have no idea what they don’t know yet. That means you’ll graduate a team of super-confident sellers who can’t wait to get on the phones. Perfect.
2. Use call recordings.
This is my favorite tip. My theory on ramp time is that it will always be present because it isn’t the “what to do/say” that takes a long time to get. It’s the “when do I do it/say it” that takes experience to really nail. So shorten that by letting reps listen to call recordings. Nope, the recordings don’t have to be their own, and they shouldn’t all be great calls. Just typical. It’s like reviewing game tapes before the big game – breaking down what the other team (customer) is doing and when they should have used the right play (skill).
3. Includes 6 critical components
All six critical components of the program are included and mixed together:
1. Systems & Tools – CRM, Intranet, Lead Management, AI, etc. 2. Product/Service – be sure it’s “how to sell it” and not “the full history of it” 3. Sales – how to sell our products over the phone (not generic sales 101 field training!) 4. Process – how leads and orders get processed + rep and customers’ top 10 questions 5. Acumen – business acumen, industry acumen, and customer acumen – critical! 6. Manager integration – nope, lunch on day one isn’t enough. Get them more involved.
4. GET ON THE PHONES! (ASAP).
If you can create an exercise where reps are calling current, potential, or even past customers by day two, do it! They can qualify leads, gather success stories, call cold leads – whatever! The right hires are itching to start calling, and the wrong hires will show reluctance and wash out. You’re welcome.
Sorry large organizations, I know it’s so tempting! But classroom-based training (in-person or virtual) is still the most effective for a reason: You can’t practice selling with a computer! Also, how engaging is your new hire’s experience when they’re clicking forward 200 times a day? Painful.
6. Rigor.
In my experience, a good 25% of every new hire class should not graduate training (yes, please be sure you’re hiring in groups, not “onesie-twosie”). When you really trust your training department, you’ll count on them to de-facto manage reps during training and coach them out the door if they won’t make it. Start, stop, and break times should be like real life on the floor, and weekly tests let them know how they’re doing.
7. Training mimics the floor.
Quick hit ways to do this:
a. You have a systems sandbox for training (a monthly updated mirror image of all systems) b. Phones and systems in the classroom for better role plays c. Dummy accounts or even real (low scoring) accounts for practice d. Call coaching or quality forms approved by sales leadership used for role plays/testing e. Scenario-based testing (because when is a real client going to say, “A. send me a quote…B. schedule a call back…”?)
8. Don’t let HR teach reps how to sell.
There’s a difference between regular company training and sales training. Aberdeen recently reported that 85% of best-in-class sales teams use a professional sales curriculum or trainer. What is good sales training? (read more about that here)
Overwhelmed? Here are a few easy ways to start:
Get to know your training ASAP. Pick your best sales leader and charge them with shortening ramp. Attend training, learn about good training, and partner and assist your trainer with the curriculum.
Get the reports. Sales numbers won’t show you class-by-class ramp times unless you specifically build them. Believe me, it’s worth it.
Close the loop. Are you reporting the top three skill gaps on the floor to training on a monthly or quarterly basis? Do you have the call coaching and rep meeting cadence in place to provide this?
Get some help. Spend the money to bring in a professional sales training leader, someone to fix your program or a great sales training curriculum. When reps ramp faster and stay longer, you’ll wish you budgeted for this three years ago!
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If you’re reading this, you’ve probably made an outbound sales call. You’ve probably made thousands. Stop and think for a second just how many things about this take guts – it takes sales confidence. Calling a stranger not expecting your call and essentially asking them for money. Betting a chunk of your family’s income on your abilities. Try to pretend you’ve never done it before. Can you remember your initial hesitance? The questions you had? The doubts and fears?
This is how our new hires and yet-to-be-hired people feel. We forget that sometimes. This is scary stuff.
It takes confidence in yourself, your ability to connect, to think on your feet, to pull the right phrase, the right answer, the right joke.
Not all of us are born with this kind of confidence – the deep knowing, the foundation, the deep belief in one’s own abilities. And many of those people are in sales.
How do we do it? With another word called bravery. Bravery isn’t the same as confidence.
I describe bravery to my kids as feeling scared and doing it anyway. “I know the hallway is dark honey. I know you feel scared. That’s why they call it being brave. It wouldn’t be bravery if you weren’t scared. You’ll be ok.” Bravery is suiting up! Putting on the superhero cape and facing the bad guys.
We know this as “fake it till you make it.”
I grew up in a very unstable home life. We moved so much that every 2 years was a new school for me.
New girl. New school. New classroom. New teacher. 22 pairs of eyes turn and stare at the new girl. So I guess I know something about bravery.
I think that is why I’m drawn to sales. We push bravery in sales. Bravery is being a little terrified they’ll hang up or say no and doing it anyway. But confidence is being absolutely sure they shouldn’t. Really knowing and believing the value of my product and service, plus the value of me.
Which do you think sounds better on the phone? Confidence or bravery?
Confidence. Sure! Confidence is what sells. It’s what permits the deeper questions, the customer education, and the ability to challenge. It makes the extra dials, keeps customers on the phone, and overcomes objections. Confidence asks for referrals. And then does it again. And again. For years.
Confidence doesn’t burn out after a year and a half. (the average lifespan of an inside sales rep). But bravery sure does. There are only so many days we can put on that cape and that mask and pick up that phone. Suit up. Dial. Ask.
New girl. New school. New classroom. New teacher. 22 pairs of eyes…
Bravery is not a recipe for long-term success. And I assert that our sport of sales can benefit from going beyond bravery…to confidence.
But there’s a step between bravery and confidence and it’s called courage.
Courage isn’t “fake it till you make it”. Courage is the “making it”. And to make it, we have to go through the fear. Not over the fear, not around the fear, through the fear. We have to stand in it.
Quietly.
And it’s terrifying.
Courage is facing your fears. Naming them and then tackling them with an open mind and heart. It’s being vulnerable, being honest, and being open. It’s considering the rejection, the loss, or the humiliation and being OK with it and being you – a stronger you – on the other side. It’s letting others in to see.
It’s standing in the darkness. Until you are not scared anymore.
Like many, I have buckets of bravery, but not nearly enough confidence. And two things dawned on me recently:
Admitting this out loud and actively learning about confidence and how we get it, how we lose it, how we can grow it is my path. It’s what I do – I find things that are hard to do, where we have a gap in public knowledge or ability, and I figure out a way to teach it. It’s my path to learn this, to share this, to teach this.
I started 10+ years ago and didn’t know it. The reason Factor 8 is the most referred sales training company in the world isn’t just because of our curriculum. It’s our model. When we get on the phones and do what we teach, we’re not just applying skills, we’re growing confidence.
We’re asking a room full of strangers to pick up the phone and try something they learned 20 minutes ago. And we do it, together. And our facilitators stand with them in the dark. We listen, we encourage, we coach. We show everyone in the room that it’s OK to fail, it’s fun to mess up, and they don’t have to be perfect. In fact, we REWARD imperfection and risk-taking and we shine a little light into the dark room of courage. And you’ll never guess what comes out on the other side…
Confidence.
We’re in the business of teaching sales confidence. Our loyal clients and students probably already knew this. It feels like such a big revelation that it’s almost silly it took me ten years to figure it out. But now that I’m here? I’m immensely proud. I’ve always been proud of our model, our results, and the feedback we get that we change lives. But now I see how aligned Factor 8 is with my own path, my personal passions – and fears, and I’ve fallen in love with this little company all over again.
My challenge to you: Ask yourself if you’re pushing bravery at work or instilling confidence. Remember that bravery burns out and confidence is what sells. If you can help your teams grow the confidence, you’ll grow your results, you’ll keep your team longer, and you’ll all grow as humans. And isn’t that what it’s really all about?
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