"Can you tell me why they don't sell?" Part I

This is one of the best questions a sales manager can ask me. Why?

Because, it reveals all the dysfunction that exists in a sales organization. Also, if a sales manager is asking this question it means that she is not a leader. An essential feature of leadership is communication SO if a sales manager doesn't know why most of the sales people on her team is not selling, it means that she is not talking to them, something else is, but not her.

In this opportunity, I'm going to share the dialog that I had with a sales manager after she asked me if I knew why her sales reps weren't selling.

She's the sales manager (SM), works in beauty industry and I'm the coach (C).


Our conversation:

SM -"Can you tell me why they don't sell?"
C -"How many sales reps you have?"
SM -"10"
C -"How many of them have problems?"
SM -"7"
C - "Have you asked them?"
SM- "Yes, well... no. What I have asked them is that if they need anything. Normally reply that no, that they have everything or they start complaining and that's when I stop the conversation."
C -"Any other place where you try to talk to them besides the aisles?"
SM - "Well in the meetings but normally what I try to do is to 'motivate' them. I talk to them, play movies,  I give them prizes. That's what they tell me to do... our bosses. The problem is that I'm running out of themes. I don't know what else to say in the meetings and nothing happens. No change."
C -"Have you asked them, directly, why they don't sell, in an appropriate environment to have a conversation?"
SM - "Two or three times but again, they start complaining, blaming everything, from the product to me."
C - "OK, What can you do to know why they're not selling?"
SM - "Ask them... but, how? Yes, I can ask them but how?"
C -"OK, let me ask you this, in order to find out the info that you need  what type of conversation do you require to have?"
SM - "Well... (she pauses and imagine the conversation), first, it has to be in private. No interruptions, no noises, no other people. In my office. With enough time. If I don't give myself time, I'll feel pressured and will start pushing the meeting."
C - "Exactly, and what do you want to get out of those conversations?"
SM - "Information remember? Why they don't sell. The causes."
C - "OK so, do you mind telling me what are you going to say?"
SM - "Ask them, directly, why they are not selling."
C - "That's OK. Nothing more? With whom are you going to have these conversations?"
SM - "Well no, for now. I want to see how the conversation goes after I ask them. With all of them!"
C -"With whom are you going to start?"
C - She gives me a name. "And that's it?"
SM - "Well no. I think that's better to start with three and see what happens."
C -"OK, you are going to ask that question AND my suggestion is to ask and keep asking. There's no defense against questions."  I gave her two or three more questions to keep asking and to find out the causes of this situation.

After this conversation she talked to 3 sales reps, privately, in her office.
In our next session she told me what  happened.

Some highlights:
-she talked with 3 of them for more than 30 minutes each individually
-all of them thought that they were going to be fired
-she brought with her the numbers of each the sales rep
-she asked and asked and asked
-in one case, the mood shift from tension to a desire to meet again
-she avoided to get hooked with the complaints, excuses and negativity
-and yes, in two of them she find out the causes of their bad performance
-1 quit
-1 wanted to keep having private talks with her
-1 will think about what they talked, promised to do what was talked and not sure about this format... 'too personal, too close'

This is what she told me what happened:

SM  "-Main causes? Mostly fear and lack of training, sales techniques. I can say that they don't have any order. Very chaotic, messy. That blinds them. No follow up. Also, I perceived that all of them have forgotten what brought them here in the first place. They're like lost. No sense of direction. Of course they have goals but they have forgotten them."
C -"Then, what do you plan to do?"
SM -"What do you suggest?"
C -"Before suggesting, please tell me your thoughts while you were talking to them."
SM -"Well, I will talk to the rest. I learned a lot with these meetings. I met with these three reps and all the people at the office thought that they were going to get fired. One quit, no problem with that but... one of them told me that if he was going to be punished or fired. So, I want to talk to everybody and find more answers."
C -"And with these two?"
SM- "I will meet with them again. With one, I already have an appointment to meet next week, like a follow up. With the other, we need to talk again.  Maybe on a regular basis... click! (I saw her face, suddenly she saw the Light!") Like you and me! I'll coach them! You'll help me don't you?"
C -"Yes I will help you to coach them. Nothing more?"
SM -"I'll talk to all of them and from what l find l will see and will tell you. It looks that I'm finding my answers."
C - "Later you will find that it's like a battle. If you don't talk to them, something else will. And this 'something else' is one of the causes of their situation."


Results
These conversations helped her to find out what was happening in her sales force. Why they were not selling.  Why they weren't arriving to their sales goals. Lack of selling skills, of following up the sales process.What she found took her sometime to solve it. Two more sellers quit and even though she found resistance, most of the sales reps that were required to have coaching sessions with her, had them. The mood in the organization shifted from one of resignation and negativity to one of ambition and most important, after doing this for more than 4 months, results started to get better. At the end of that year she meet her sales goals. So, coaching pays!

How to kill a sales process with your body language.

As a coach, I have witnessed hundreds of sales meetings in order to provide feedback to my clients.
They are not able to see or listen themselves. 
The purpose is seeing and listening their selling performance and later, as part of the coaching process, provide feedback. Sometimes I bring a recorder with me and after the sales meeting, we listen to the tape together.
At some of these meetings, I have witnessed how some of my clients have ruined their sales meetings with their 'automatic' body language.  As a coach, I can listen to what they say AND simultaneously, see how they use their non verbal communication in the interview.

They can use it in three levels:

1. Random - This is the category in which almost all of the sales reps fall. Their body is completely disconnected from the sales interview purpose and this is the main reason why people don't accept easily sales reps.
2. Connected - Mind, body and emotions, are connected with the main purpose.
3. Aligned - Sales reps build a strategy around how they are going to use their body and other non verbals as tools to mobilize his client through the sales process towards a positive closing. This is a very rare art but powerful and very effective.

I'm surprise that most of the B2B sales reps are not trained on how to use these 'outside of the sales presentation' mechanisms to align themselves with the client and close the deal.

I will share with you 3 examples on what NOT to do with your non verbal expressions during a sales meeting. Two the sales reps of  these three examples, work for global companies that have said their sales rep are trained in everything: from how to use the fork to how to do networking. From these experiences, it seems that the very essentials, on how to use their non verbal communications, is missing in their curriculum. 


Here they are:
1.    A life insurance sales woman:

• While doing her presentation, she was rubbing her hands. This movement was distracting the prospect, who was trying to listen to her and at the same time was looking her hands. At some point, the prospect finally surrendered in trying to understand what she was saying, he was too distracted. He disengaged from the conversation, relaxing himself in the chair and crossing his arms. Astonishingly, my client, didn't noticed that the prospect wasn't listening anymore, that he was gone and she continued talking. The meeting ended when the prospect said: "Let me study your information and I will call you if I make a decision. I have to show this to my wife."  No follow up was enough to bring him back to her pipeline.

 2.   An IT sales rep.

• He works for a small company that sold more than 5 million CAD the last year in IT solutions. He prepared his presentation thoroughly using the most advanced consultative selling techniques. When we arrived we were leaded to the prospect's office. He showed us were to seat and gave my client the signal to start which made a good opening. The sales rep had a very well designed sequence, good questions, nice answers from the prospect and as we were moving to an agreement to explore further, my client started to feel positive, so positive that he started to move forward to the prospect's desk. The client started to feel OK with the interview, my client felt it and started to move towards the desk. Feeling that he had good rapport, he started to take out some printed materials and moved things on top of his prospect desk . Wrong move. The problem was that he didn't ask the client for permission to do it and that he was careless in the way that moved the things over the prospect's desk. As soon as he started to do this, the prospect was surprised, and with a look of shock in his face, said everything. With these movements my client lost the rapport that he had and the client ended the meeting. My client felt disappointed and frustrated and when I asked to him what he thought what happened he replied: 'I don't know.'

3. A Manufacturing Products Sales Rep

• My client was starting a sales process with this company that she wanted for long time to have in her pipeline and this was the 1st interview. My client was carrying a briefcase. She started this meeting with the final user of her product. Since the very beginning she hold her hand bag in front of her. She never put it aside. Given my position at the table, watching the interview, I noticed how the prospect saw the hand bag several times. My client, left the hand bag open and struggled to make her presentation because she never got rid of it. In fact, she never took her left hand out of it. The prospect perceived that the hand bag was between he and the seller. How did I notice this? Because he looked at it several times. The meeting ended with a very cold: 'I'll call you." The prospect perceived a barrier, he felt that something was between him and the sales rep.

Comments
You can do a great sales presentation but your nonverbal communication might have other plans.  These were just three examples of how good opportunities were lost just because the sales rep wasn't completely in charge of his/her body language. It is not just a matter of having some knowledge about what happens with your non-verbal communication, what matters is if you can use your knowledge about non-verbal communication to help you close the deal.

What exactly do you do when you get your best selling results? 1st principle of self-coaching: 'Know yourself'.

One of the most interesting 'homeworks' that my clients have done is to answer this question (and its variances):

• 'What do I do when I get my best selling results?'

I (and them) am amazed on the impact that the answer(s) to this question produce in their performance and results.

You see, sometimes happens that they start to forget who they were when they executed almost perfectly and/or how they closed this and/or that account. And when they forget, they start to panic and thinking that they need another training, that something is wrong with them or that they are not sales reps anymore. Far from that, when they answer this question, they are surprised with the amount of information that is revealed: the moods that they have, the techniques that they used, the courage that they showed up, the strategies that they designed. The best part is that now that this information has been revealed, they have more resources for a 'come back'. You see, sometimes the problem is one of memory.


It is better when they answer the question while in the 'coaching' session, with a coach.
Why? Because I ask questions that can bring more from the experience. Almost the complete experience and from there, we apply to present situations to better the future.

Ramon Ruiz

Coaching as a Key element of Leadership and Building Trust in Sales Organizations

Coaching is KEY to build leadership and trust in a sales team.
'Coaching is doing the enough number of interventions to get results through others.' -Ferdinand Fournies

It is an excellent tool to change the mood of the coachee.

If you want to influence and/or persuade your sales team, you better be coaching them or at least, some of them.

Coaching, as a tool of leadership, provides POWER to the sales representative AND to the sales manager. You could be a very powerful sales manager.

Example of my experience

A sales manager of a life insurance organization asked me to coach him. He wanted to meet his sales goals and he wanted to understand how 'this coaching thing' could help him and
his team.

In our first conversation, I asked him to choose several people from his team as he was going to coach them. He told me that he didn't know how to coach. I replied that that was precisely the reason why I was there: to mentor him on how to coach his sales reps. 
(This is an interesting aspect: I coached lots of sales managers in Mexico and now that some of them are certifying themselves as coaches, they are finding that they already knew how to do it!)

The first stage of the process lasted 6 months.

First Challenges

During the first three months, he faced some minor challenges coaching his sales reps: they didn't arrive on time, sometimes they canceled the session or they just didn't show up at the time of the session, during the session, they were resistant or they agreed almost with everything but they didn't do anything.

He was disappointed (now I understand why sales managers don't want to coach their sales reps) and he wanted to quit the process. I laughed and told him that it was part of the process and that it was very important for him to keep the process alive. 

At the same time, he was building his coaching techniques repertoire (we covered from Grinder, to Fournies, to Leonard, to Flores, to O´Hanlon) and his 'how to influence' them repertoire. One of the main purposes on his coaching process was to analyze and solve: his sales reps' problems, his problems with the coaching process, his communication skills, his selling communication repertoire and everything related to his sales goals.

On the third month of our process, he started to notice that most of his sales rep in the coaching process, weren't canceling the sessions, they were arriving on time and that they were asking for help, real help to solve real problems/situations with their sales process execution. 

Things started to flow and the resistance was almost gone. They were starting to trust him. This brought a very interesting issue for him: they were working with him, in his sales team before this coaching process started so he started to ask himself: 'what was the exact nature of my relationship with them?' Because the difference is huge. The quality of the relationship now is greater that the one we had before. And the rest of the team? The quality of the relationship with the rest of the team is so poor...' A shocking moment.

I affirm that with this coaching process he made a shift in the quality of the relationship that he had with them. Before, they where related but at a level that wasn't directly related with the committed results selling life insurance. The only thing that is required to transform a group into a team is a shift in the quality of the relationship. But I'm sure that you already know that.

Impact in the Sales Organization

Now, between the 4th-6th month of the coaching process, he started to notice something more. The coachees, his sales representatives, were getting better results. He was already delighted with the trust that he was building so with the results, he became a fan of coaching. They started to sell, to have their pipeline full, their income started to get better, they started to have a relevant activity and to get noticed by the rest of the group.
His team has 20 sales representatives. He was coaching only 5. The other 15 were asking what was happening in the coaching sessions, they wanted to have coaching and they were asking for it.

One day, in one of our sessions, he told me that he was noticing something more. That the mood of his entire sales organization was shifting, was more positive, more ambitious. In the general Monday morning meetings, the team was not only more relaxed but, they were more cooperative instead of more defiant and willing to do more to get better results, to sell more. They were complaining less. We must remember that he was only coaching 5 of the 20 sales reps that were in his team. Could be possible that these five were influencing the other 15?

What happened

I was coaching him on how to coach them. We had four sessions per month. At the very beginning he was having the usual problems that every sales manager has when he hasn't installed the practice of coaching in his sales organization. He was having resistance and they weren't doing what they agreed on doing. He was frustrated BUT suddenly this changed. Now, the change could just have stayed withing these 5 sales reps but it was quite different: his entire organization started to change, particularly the mood, just by coaching these 5 sales reps. Why?

It's easy. During the sales coaching process, these sales reps were experiencing changes in their performance and results as an effect of going to their sessions with their manager. These sessions were the first opportunity in their careers to analize their sales situation, performance, moods, expectations, professional and personal goals. 

The sales manager told me once that at the beginning, most of them arrived to their session unmotivated, but, after the coaching conversation, they left it with a completely different mood: ambition. And from there, they were talking to the other members of the team. It was like, as one of them described, as if 'I arrived feeling like a candle with the light off and after the conversation with R., I felt like a candle, but with the light on'. They were acting as 'change agents'. 'Moods are contagious', says Jim Selman. They got out of the coaching sessions in a different mood and then, other sales reps asked them what was happening, what exactly they were talking about and they shared the content to others.  After some weeks, the sales reps that weren't receiving coaching, started to ask to the ones that were in the process about what to do in this or that situation. The coach was coaching some sales reps that were doing some unofficial coaching to the rest of the team. 

Please, we weren't creating, for the sake of results, a coaching team. But, the leader, the sales manager was able to make a difference in the moods AND results of his team coaching only 5 people. He was delighted. The group dynamics changed and his team started getting great results.

After the Coaching Process

We did this for one year. During the first six months he coached, with a lot of discipline, a few of the members of his team. With this, he was able, through others, to change the group dynamics,  performance, results and the particular and general moods. 
He learned how to intervene in both: if a person was having problems in his production or in the team. He was aware where his power as a leader resided: in making enough number and timed interventions... he suddenly discovered that he was able to change positively his entire organization, instead of leaving it to training courses, tactical strategies or motivational meetings. He discovered that he could do something. It was very important for him to learn how to own, to take charge, to appropriate.  And money, money started to flow.
During the next 6 months, we designed the leadership dynamics that he required in order to achieve his desired results. He was able to exercise more power to transform and mobilize his sales force.

Are you ready to sell? Ableness, Closing and Action

This means being ready to ask:

• for the business-attempt at least once, to close the deal
• the required questions to define the client’s situation so they will be able to prescribe
• the next required action/movement defined by your sales process
• what your sales process require to be alive

And believe me, there are a lot of sales representatives that are not ready to sell.
This means that they are not ready to ask:

• for the deal, they just tell (they are in the telling business, as this case, not in the selling business)
• questions in order to have all the info required to craft a solution
• to the client to take the next action defined by your sales process

Let me illustrate with a case:

Recently, a client from Toronto asked for my help to design his selling strategies so he could sell the products that he was importing from his country. These were small, cheap and beautiful. They can be used as ornament in almost every part at home. We met in several opportunities to design precisely what he was going to say/do to sell them. He was planning to talk/visit the Buying Manager and send/leave to him a catalog containing photographs and descriptions of the products. This catalog was very well designed and printed. After having analyzed in detail his selling strategy, we arrived to the conclusion that sending/talking to the buying manager was useless. This was based in my experience.

Analyzing closely what he was trying to sell, we designed the following selling strategy:

• he was going to approach the sales representatives at the stores where he thought he could sell his products and engage with them in a soft inquiry conversation  about the products in the catalog, how well did they know their clients, who, among their clients might buy these products and "more than guess", if they were able to sell these products to their clients.

The thought that was behind this strategy was:

"The store sales representative have a lot of info related to the store's clients. They know the buying patterns of their clients, type of home that each one of them has and, most importantly, which of them where more suitable to buy, soon, the products that my client was selling. The buying manager wasn't an important person now, BUT indeed, he was an important person in the power chain, so we decide to leave him near the end of the sales process. The sales representatives were the ones that were going to sell these products. We were sure that if the store's sales representative thought that these products were 'sellable' to some of their clients, then, it was time to go to the sales manager. He will buy them."

After talking to several sales representatives, some of them suggested to start talking to the sales manager, what my client did immediately." Some of these visits went so well that they scheduled immediately a 2nd meeting to close the deal and make the first order.

A subtle but key distinction in closing.

After several 1st interviews with some sales representatives and sales managers, some 2nd interviews were scheduled with some sales managers. In our selling strategy design, these interviews were designed to close the sale. But before we created it, I asked him what exactly he was planning to do. He explained briefly that he was going to bring with him the catalog, he was going to review it with the sales manager and if he, the sales manager, asked for it, the catalog, he was going to leave it there, for further review. In fact, he thought in bringing some samples with him and show them to the buyer. In short, he was preparing himself to do more of the same: telling.

Then I asked:

• “What would happen if the client, in that moment, decides to place an order, how are you going to take it? What’s the purpose of you going to these 2nd interviews? Furthermore, what would happen if he, the client, doesn't decide to place an order, how are you going to help him to decide to buy from you?” 

I want to make clear that, yes, we were designing an entire sales process AND some selling strategies for his particular clients BUT, my purpose in asking him these questions was to find if he was thinking in closing the sale, in making a deal. And as you have read, I found out that that he didn't have that concept:

• how to make the client do something, in this case, accept the offer.

I know that for some of you, this could sound strange: not being aware of the ‘closing act’ of a sale, and please don’t take me wrong but, in my experience, lots of sales representatives, in order to avoid the uncomfortable moment that it represents, asking for something to the prospect/client, they just keep telling, hoping that the client will do the job for them. But if that doesn't happen, and normally it won't,  they leave the sales conversation, not only without having asked for the order but for anything in particular that could have helped him to move through his sales process. They go, as in this case, ‘just to tell’, not to sell.

The closing the sale mechanics and vehicles

He was in shock to discover that he didn't have the distinction: close a sale.. This concept of closing was missing from his selling repertoire so, after it was clear that we he needed to do something out of his normal and without risk presentation, we designed the closing mechanics. The other thing that I noticed while we were designing these closing mechanics was that he started to feel fear, some kind of uneasiness that he hasn't experienced before and then I knew it, he wasn't prepared to close the sale because he felt some type of nervousness and this is common in a lot of sales reps: they don't try enough to close the sale because they are protecting their EGO from rejection but that's another matter that I with deal with in future writings.

He discovered two things:

• that he needed a closing vehicle: a document or documents where to take the order and a receipt to register an advance or a deposit from the client
• that he needed a closing mechanics that allowed him to create the moment to ASK for and close the deal

How he did it? With the type of products that he was selling and the amount the clients were going to pay, we assumed, and later proved correctly, that it was going to be easy for him to say:

The dialog:

-“Now that we both know that your clients would want to have this in their backyards or in their living rooms or in their kitchens, and that we have arrived to some numbers them, then it is OK with you to start with 23 of this, 30 of this, and 15 of this?

(SILENCE... UNTIL THE CLIENT CONFIRMS AND/OR CHANGE THE NUMBERS AND TALKS VERBALLY.)

 -"Perfect, let me take the order here." (He writes and makes calculations to arrive to the final figure.)

 -"The total is X.00CAD. I need a deposit now and the rest at delivery."

(SILENCE... UNTIL THE CLIENT CONFIRMS AND/OR WANTS TO NEGOTIATE . THEN NEGOTIATE AND SILENCE AGAIN.)

 (Then, the client signs the order. My client asks and wait for the advance or makes a agreement to pick it up sometime in the future, agree on the delivery dates, says 'thank you' and leave.)

Some of you can imagine the amount of problems and anxiety that these mechanics produce in sales reps. Some are too shy just to follow this small but effective sequence. They don't execute it: they just tell, hope... and leave.

Results

When he 'got' the "I have to close/produce action in my clients" concept, he left the ‘telling’ mode and got into the ‘selling’ part which for him meant, start asking not only for the order but, as I have already mentioned, asking questions to better understand the client's situation, dare to ask for a the next appointment in order to keep alive his sales cycle, and, above all, being able to learn to ask. In that moment, ambition was installed.
He said: "A lot of things could happen if I just ask for them."

So... Are you ready to sell?

To close a sale, is required to ask for it. It's necessary to be able to produce action in the client. The client will be ready to take action just if he sees possibilities for himself in what he's being offered. I know that some prospects ask for the product/service by themselves but the majority of the sales reps still have to ask for the business/deal, particularly if they are selling B2C products.  There are thousands of books dedicated to the subject of closing a sale BUT, as I have explained to several clients, there is one critical distinction in the act of closing and this is the ability to produce action in other people. That is what closing is all about, to produce action, desired action in the client and the client is going to take action only if he sees possibilities for himself in the offer that the sales rep is doing.

Now, there is a huge difference about what a sales rep considers selling and what really is selling. There is a huge difference between selling and telling. Telling is a common presentation. They think that telling is selling and after some telling the client is going to 'jump' and say: "I want what you have, where do I sign?" But no, it doesn't work that way. If you want to break the inertia in which the client lives and want to move him in the right direction, you need to learn to ask.

Are you there?

Introduction
When I'm in a conversation with a client, together designing her selling strategies, I know that I can approach her situation from several perspectives:

• how her selling repertoire is enabling her to produce the results that she wants/needs/is committed to and what is missing
• how her moods prevent/allow her to do what she wants/needs to do to meet her sales goals
• if she is able or not to produce action in herself and in others (clients, company)
• her verbal and non verbal communication.

In this particular case, her situation was addressed from all of these perspectives during the process BUT, in this particular conversation, we only covered two points:

• 'listening' and BEING FULLY PRESENT at the sales call.

Listening or not listening?
The expression "you are not listening" is not correct. The problem with some sales representatives is not if they are listening or not. They always are. The problems, in fact, are two:

• what exactly are they listening to and, 
• if they are FULLY PRESENT at the sales meeting

And a great number of them are not FULLY PRESENT at their sales meetings and are not FULLY PRESENT at their selling careers. Lots of distractions, problems, situations (circumstances, says Bernard Shaw) are created just for the sake of not BEING THERE.

I ask them:

• "Where are you when you are at a sales meeting?"
• "Are you THERE?"
• As a joke,  I use sometimes a line from Pink Floyd's masterpiece 'The Wall': "Is there anybody in there?"

BEING PRESENT at a sales call allows a sales rep to use, fully, his sales repertoire but if not, if he's not there, how?

A situation
One of the most amazing things that are revealed in conversations with sales representatives is if they are THERE, PRESENT, at the sales meeting with their clients. Not only physically, but mentally as well.
In the case that I'm going to share with you, we, my client, E., and I, started analyzing how she was handling a particular set of tools previously designed for her to handle this part of her sales process. I asked her if she was asking the questions that were created for this 1st interview and in what order. She said that she was asking the questions, sometimes in a particular order and sometimes in other and that they were serving its purpose BUT suddenly she said:

"My problem is not if I'm asking questions, my problem is, and let me tell you an example, when one client was answering an open ended question, I started to 'think' in other things. I stopped listening to him. I noticed that I wasn't 'listening' when he stopped talking. Then he asked me something about my company and I was still drowsy, recovering from the trip that I  made with my thoughts, so I couldn't answer completely.  Then he said: let me review your information and I'll call you. Thanks a lot for coming. And he showed me the door."

Yes, I know that you might be thinking that:

• "E. is not listening, her problem is that she is not listening to her client. In the moment that she starts listening, everything is going to change."

It can be as simple as that and everybody hopes it is but it isn't. The problem is that 'her not listening' has a cause. SHE is listening, and very clear, but not to the client.

What happens? The mechanics

When I was in Mexico coaching sales representatives, one of the most unnoticed but one of the most debilitating patterns that plagued my clients was that, indeed, they were listening but to the wrong guy, not the client when they were at the sales meeting. Some of them, several times left, more that once, mentally,  the sales interview. Not all of them had this problem, they had others, but most of them, experienced this situation, so often enough, without being able to stop it, that their sales meetings were damaged in a way that they couldn't be closed positively.

So, what takes my clients out of their selling conversations with their clients? What makes them to stop 'listening' to their clients and what exactly they start 'listening'? What are these things called 'thoughts'?

The problems start is when a very sutil, tiny BUT powerful voice, that many people think are 'thoughts',  begins to talk.
Returning to E., she started to listen, while she was with her client, this little voice saying to her ear:

• "What the hell I'm doing here? He is not going to buy! I'll better be doing other things. Oh! Margie is coming today at the evening. What are we going to do? Lets see....

This comment was enough for her to take her mind out of the sales conversation and put her with Margie. Her body stayed there, of course, with that smile that some sales reps have, but tense, just pretending that she was WITH (listening) the client.
The comment made by her 'little tiny voice' opened a door for a whole private conversation and she started to listen to a discourse, a complete story, that she enjoyed of course because the 'little voice' has hypnotic powers and is better to be out, with her company, than to handle the tension with the client.
She started to feel relaxed and comfortable. He was still talking. Please don't think that this happens in minutes. It happens in seconds. One moment you are PRESENT, there, fully there and in other, you are planning your evening with Margie. And the content is irrelevant. The subjects are endless. The purpose is to take her out of the sales interview. To 'leave' the sales conversation with her client. What she listened is irrelevant. Whom she started to listen to was relevant and the consequences of leaving the sales interview the same.

 

How she returned to the sales call, with her client?
E. came back to the sales interview when the client asked her a question. E. noticed that she was drowsy, like awakening from a hypnotic trance and tried to make her mind up so she could answer him. It was hard to return but she did it finally. The client, of course, saw that she wasn't 'paying attention' to him. That she wasn't 'listening' so he took her brochure and promised to call her as soon as he read the info. She never heard from him again. And it's not common to sales reps that are not there, to have a lot of difficulties to close sales.

Awareness
She wasn't aware that a voice took her out of the client's office, hypnotized her and ruined her sales call. She thought that those were just 'thoughts' and a problem with listening, as her manager told her. E. was listening but to the wrong 'person'. Her ability to listen is undamaged. The problem is with her ability TO BE FULLY PRESENT AT THE SALES INTERVIEW. What she had was a very destructive pattern that was destroying her sales interviews.

At some point of our conversation she said: "I was thinking about other things."
Instead she could have said:

• "I was telling to myself some more entertaining stories and is more comfortable."
• "I was hypnotizing myself because I can't stand the fear that causes me to be with a client."
• "I wasn't listening to the client, I was listening to me because I don't give a d... about him."
• "I prefer to listen to me because I don't have ambition."

Her conclusions
I asked E. how many times this had happened. She was able to see that she was blaming other things outside herself without acknowledging that she was losing sales or not closing them, just because she wasn't PRESENT at the sales call. Because she choose to listen to the 'wrong guy'.

Being There
How she managed to be THERE all the time, with the client? How she came back to her sales interviews?
Several things were prescribed that were not easy to apply. First to catch the moment when this 'little voice' starts to talk. Second, make a list of the consequences of leaving. The most important was that this was costing money to her. Third, increase your level of ambition. Understand that there is money in every moment of the sales interview.

A problem
This problem is labeled as 'you don't listen'. As in the case of E., her manager told her several times that she 'wasn't listening' to her clients. He recommended a course, that she took, about 'active listening'. The course didn't work. Until E. came to me, she discovered that one 'little voice' was talking to her and that this 'little voice' was distracting her. Being fully present is an attention skill, not a selling skill.

Ramon Ruiz

How to sell outside of your 'ethnic silo'.

November 5, 2009
Toronto, ON
ramon.ruizg@gmail.com

Introduction
I know that the term 'ethnic silo' can sound strange to people that live outside Canada. 'What's that?', you might say. I'm going to explain, among other things, the term few lines below. The purpose of this article is to describe one of the most important sales coaching conversations of the coaching process that a Financial Adviser of one of the biggest Canadian Insurance company and I had. This helped her to start selling outside her 'ethnic silo'. She is originally from one Latin American country and arrived to Canada few years ago. What happened in this conversation and in the whole process brought her more money, a bigger, much more bigger market and a lot more opportunities to sell.

A Brief Note About the Format of this article.
I wrote this article trying to be precise in the details of the coaching conversation that we had. Also, I added comments, where I judged appropriate, about the reason why I asked the questions I asked.

What's an 'ethnic silo'?
Briefly, when immigrants arrive to Canada, some of them, ''tend to live in 'ethnic silos' and use their native language'' (Here I'm quoting Naeem Noorani: this is his web site).

Regarding sales, they tend to sell only to people that are at their own 'ethnic silo'. Why? Several factors but the most important are fear and assumptions (false, most of them) about what is outside of it. In this case, this Financial Adviser, was only selling to Hispanics. She was selling only to Spanish speaking clients therefore, her market was very small compared with the size of the clients she could get outside her 'ethnic silo' in Toronto, ON.

The Coaching Conversation

When we started our coaching process, she told me that one of her main goals was:

-"To sell to Canadians, not only to Hispanics. They love me and they keep referring business almost all the time and I have built some important networks with them but I want to start selling to other cultures, particularly to native English speaking Canadians."

(She used that term, is not mine and I didn't start a conversation trying to explain to her that we are all Canadians, some are new, some are old and/or some are natural English speakers. I'm a sales coach, not an immigration expert. For me it was clear that what she was saying was that she wanted to sell to a bigger, much bigger market.)

Coach: - "And how do you plan to do that?"

(I always, as maybe you have read, ask this question. They come to me asking a lot of 'hows' but almost always they know them and when they don't we design together and when we don't I tell them exactly what to do.)

Financial Adviser: -"Well, that's exactly why I'm talking to you, you are supposed to tell me how."
Coach: -"Right. We need to create a specific strategy that you can execute in order to start selling outside the Hispanic community, particularly to Canadians, as one of your main selling goal."
Financial Adviser: -"Yes"
Coach: -"Now, I must ask you this, lets say that you can start selling right now outside the Hispanic community, particularly to Canadians, do you know to whom exactly are you going to sell? Do you know where to start?"
Financial Adviser -"Yes. Our manager gave us several lists with qualified prospects. I can start calling them, you know, cold calling."

(In the moment after she said this, I noticed that she started to rub her hands, she crossed her arms and legs and started to breath faster.)

Coach: -"When does the manager gave you the list?"
Financial Adviser:-"He gave us the list more than three months ago."
Coach: -"And?"
Financial Adviser: -"Yes, I know but..."
Coach:-"What is your plan? How are you going to sell to this desired market?"

(I want you to notice two things. First, I repeat the question 'how' on purpose. My experience tells me that, frequently, the first time I ask, they want to keep their Ego protected and not to risk saying something useless and/or to be exposed: 'why, if I know how to do it, why I haven't started or done it?' Second: If I insist, they are going to tell me exactly what they are going to do and normally their plan is the one that's going to work. Third, it's a matter of appropriateness: if the solution comes from them, it belongs to them and them are going to use it.)

Financial Adviser:-"Let me tell you: I have the list so the thing is to start calling and that's it."
Coach: -''Now, what exactly is stopping you or has stopped you from doing it since you have those lists three months ago?''
Financial Adviser: -"I don't know. Could be fear. No, I don't know.

(All her non verbal communication tells me that she is experiencing the fear that stops her to call the prospects on those lists. She starts feeling exactly what she feels when she imagine herself doing the phone calls OR having sales meetings with her prospects. Are their assumptions and perceptions the ones that are scaring her not what she's going to do. Her interpretations about this new project are the ones that are keeping her from selling not what will happen in 'reality'. She's having a strong reaction. Also, she confessed later that one of her most scary thoughts was: 'What would happen if I discover that I can't sell but only in Spanish?' She didn't wanted to deal with that 'reality'. She was having a strong nonverbal reaction.)

Coach: -"I don't know, could be. Now, answer this, if that's the case, to what exactly are you fearful? What exactly do you fear?"
Financial Adviser: -"I don't know... (sighs)... no, I know: one is to froze in the middle of the phone call... to arrive to a point where I don't know what to say."
Coach: -'But a lot of other things could happen, besides frozen yourself, like positive ones, right?'
Financial Adviser: -'Yeah... sure...' (As if she hasn't ever consider the possibility of something different, besides freezing in that moment, could happen.)
Coach: -What other fear do yo have or has you? Yes, you don't have fears, fears have you, if not what's the whole point? Right now they have a grip on you that's why I have to keep asking: what other do you have?
Financial Adviser: -To freeze in the sales call, to freeze in front of my client during the interview because I don't know what to say next or because I can't find the right words in English.
Coach: -"Aand, how do you plan to solve them?
Financial Adviser: -"Mee?! OK, me. The freezing during the phone call can be solved with a telephone script specially designed for those phone calls... and (like an AJA moment) our manager gave us one when he gave us the lists. He said, 'don't improvise, only Beethoven improvise. (She feels relieved after she says this.) But, I have almost never used a telephone script, almost all my clients come from referrals, networking events. I have never or in very rare occasions used one. But well, it seems like I'm going to use one.

(These questions are designed to provoke precisely the answer that she gave me: to detach her to the only one possible outcome she thinks is going to happen. As she answers, she acknowledges that there are several other different outcomes that could happen and will happen. The other question, about the telephone script, belong to the domain of selling tools and skills. Later, she proved in action that using a telephone script helped her to get the positive results that she got.)

Coach: -"Now you are aware that it's possible that instead of something negative, a lot of positive things could happen if you start selling to this list, don't you? I can bet that you felt nervous when you started selling so now you will going to have a new beginning so it's normal that you are there before you start. Just wait and see... I want to go back to your fear: can you find another reason behind it? How is your English? I know that 90% of your portfolio are Hispanic clients and most of your friends are Hispanics, do you think that your English level could limit you while you do your phone calls and handle your sales meetings?"
Financial Adviser: -"No, I don't think so. I speak English very well. When we meet with my manager and in other places I speak English and remember that I have been here for more than 8 years so I don't think the language could be a problem and I know that if at any moment I have problems with words they will help me. When I spoke to native English speakers and I can't find the word or the expression that I want to use, I explain to them what I want to say and they help me and no, I can't think in other reason rather to explore a new territory."
Coach: -"And you think you can do that while you are at the sales meeting? Because we have solved the problem, at least part, with the cold calling, now, do you know exactly what to do during the sales meeting to close the deal?"
Financial Adviser: -"No, but I don't think that it would be too different from the ones that I do in Spanish. I do my presentation, I ask the client several questions, I make rapport and at the end, I ask them for the business or they decide by themselves to sign."
Coach: -"...too different..." well no, you will find that too. (I smile.) That they are not 'too different' and I think that that's one of the causes of your fear. I don't know why you are making them "... too different..." from your Hispanic clients... they are just clients and you will find that they are alike, too alike I must add, with their differences but not too many."
Financial Adviser: -"Yeah, you are right! Just clients. I feel like it's going to be tested, like if I am going in search of their approval, not their business. Sometimes I see them too big and not, as you said, they are just clients (sighes and smiles).

(This part of the conversation reminded me a movie with Gene Hackman: "Hoosiers". This is the story of an always losing basketball team of a rural town in the US. Gene Hackman does the role of a coach that has had problems in other towns and cities and is hired to coach this team. To make the long story short, with his coaching, the team arrives to the State Finals but the players, as soon they enter the Indianapolis Arena, where the final is going to be played, the became panicked of the size of the place. Then, the coach started, with the help of his players, to measure the size of the basketball play zone, just to help them to understand that it's exactly the same size that the one in which they play at home. Just this exercise reduces a lot the fear in the players and finally they win this State Championship.)

Coach: -"So? What are you going to do?"
Financial Adviser-"Start calling to the prospects that I have on my list tomorrow and rehearse mentally the sales interview but now in English and write an agenda, in English too. Lets say, I'm going to build a template in English. I'm going to ask my manager if he doesn't have one. He gave us the telephone script but nothing for the interview. Also, I will use the telephone script, at least at the beginning. After some phone calls I think that I will be able to go on my own. (smiles)"
Coach -"Sounds good. Another question: I know that you have a long selling career and you have sold insurance for sometime ago (she nods) and I know that your portfolio is mainly 90% Hispanic and we know that there is nothing wrong with that but my question is: have you ever sold to an native English speaking prospect? And if yes, what happened?"

(I made this question just with the purpose to help her to see that she has been there before and that she closed those sales. I was searching a resource reservoir: experience, skills and emotions. She sighed and smiled.)

Financial Adviser: -"(Smiling) Yes, I have. I have some clients that are native English speakers and the sales meetings went well, they are still my clients and if I remember well, I was nervous BUT I closed them. I remember feeling relieved after I left their homes but almost all of them bought from me. You are right. It doesn't have to be a problem. (Sigh)"
Coach: -"So, what are you going to do?"
Financial Adviser: -"Again? OK, prepare the telephone script, take out the list, rehearse a sales meeting in English, take some notes and start calling. Other thing that I should do is to ask one of my colleagues to go with him and watch him selling, ask my manager if he has some tool or guide to handle the meetings and like you said (I never said this but it doesn't matter.) I just need to start. Thank you. Thanks a lot. I feel a lighter and excited!"
Coach: -"That's great!! See you next week."

Final Comments:
Immediately after that session, she made several cold calls. She was surprised when two of her clients went to her office to buy the insurance. After several false starts she is now selling to new markets, earning much more money than before and finding more interesting markets for her selling career.

November 5th, 2009
Toronto, ON
info@salesconsciousness.com