Four Keys To Sales Success

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>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Hi, my name is Gerhard Gschwandtner for Selling Power TV. Today we talk about the four keys to sales success. And we have as our guest Nancy Martini. She's the president and CEO of PI Worldwide. Welcome, Nancy.

>> Nancy Martini: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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Gschwandtner: So you can define success in four little buckets, right?

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Martini: Yes.

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Gschwandtner: What is bucket number one?

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Martini: Yeah, you really want to look at four areas. The first bucket is product knowledge and positioning. Making sure that your sales reps understand their products, have some comfort and confidence, and understand how to position them out in the marketplace. Are you high-priced? Low-priced? Somewhere in the middle? A sales rep should never be surprised.

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Gschwandtner: So a sales person needs to understand the product, the application, the use, the ROI, and then the market and, and the specific customer situation.

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Martini: Exactly, and we like to think of that as the entry fee. If your reps are comfortable there, then they're ready to layer on things like sales skills and process. But they need to really understand their products fully before they go out to the client.

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Gschwandtner: And that's why 80 percent of all sales training is really product knowledge and market knowledge.

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Martini: Exactly, that's exactly what you see today.

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Gschwandtner: So what's number two?

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Martini: Number two is really sales process. So finding out if your reps use one defined process, eight steps, ten steps. Does that work for your company, or are maybe they a little more experienced and each rep has their own process, they do it their own way? There isn't a strong right or wrong, but is it working for your organization? And do they actually, each rep, do they understand how to go from step to step? Do they understand where the client is, and where they are, and what needs to happen for things to move forward? That knowledge is essential.

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Gschwandtner: Nancy, is it important that the entire company, the entire sales force, follows rigidly that same process?

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Martini: Rigid is not as critical as guidelines. Do they understand what's an opening, how do I progress to asking questions, when is it my turn to present? That's more important, so I would say strong guidelines and then some freedom and flexibility within so that the particular sales rep can use their personality and their own reading of a situation and their intelligence.

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Gschwandtner: So what you're saying is that salespeople should have a rough script, but the interpretation is left up to them.

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Martini: Yeah, and they should have actually a deep understanding of what happens in what order.

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Gschwandtner: What is number three?

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Martini: Number three is sales skills mastery. In today's environment, every single rep needs to master the top dozen sales skills, whether it's presentation skills, closing skills, opening skills, a rep needs to know them all. And in easy times you can cover a lot of skill gaps. In tougher times, those wrinkles are exposed. And today each rep needs to be very well versed in every skill.

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Gschwandtner: So what are you saying, success is a make-up, it covers up a lot of, lot of mistakes.

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Martini: Exactly, success can be a big distractor.

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Gschwandtner: Mmm hmm.

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Martini: You think, you know, the numbers are good; therefore they must be good.

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Gschwandtner: Right.

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Martini: In fact, oftentimes that's a very good time to dig deeper and understand it. In more challenging times those things become uncovered, and the keeper sales managers don't panic. This is where good training, good diagnostics, and good reinforcement arm your reps for what they need to do today.

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Gschwandtner: So in tough times it's easy to cut the training budget, but that's what, what's most needed. And you don't want to cut in the muscle.

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Martini: Exactly, and the fear is that you're going to use that training budget incorrectly. What you want is to make sure that training budget is applied to exactly the needs of the rep.

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Gschwandtner: So we had the product knowledge. We had skills mastery. We have process. What's the fourth element?

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Martini: Fourth ingredient is motivation and drive. And this is really where the sales rep and the sales manager work together. The sales manager is the leverage point in any and every organization. So it's asking the sales manager, "How do you create an environment that really capitalizes on self-motivation, on individual motivation, and create an environment that fosters learning and success?"

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Gschwandtner: How has that motivational climate changed over the last ten years? What have you seen?

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Martini: Yeah, I mean, I think traditionally if you look back ten years, it was a little more up to the reps, you know. Rah-rah motivation looked like motivational speaker, get everybody all excited, and that wears off. True motivation comes from -- it's very innate. Something that excites you is different from something that excites me. What gets me up every morning? What helps you or I give 110 percent every day? That's actually something you can measure and something you can leverage as a manager in the day-to-day performance of a sales rep.

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Gschwandtner: So what gets you excited every day?

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Martini: Challenge. Being able to grab a challenge, look at the possibilities, see how big things can be, that just excites me. What can be done.

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Gschwandtner: Can you tell me how that translates into your company's success? I hear that you have 250 consultants worldwide.

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Martini: We do. We're growing quickly. We've been around for 53 years, but we're actually now in a growth mode. We have 250 consultants around the world, 45 offices. We're active in 143 countries with over 7,500 clients.

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Gschwandtner: Well, thank you, Nancy for sharing all this great information, and we are going to continue our conversation with Nancy Martini tomorrow when we discuss how to grow sales talent.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====