This white paper looks at the most recent research and proves the relationship between genuinely engaged employees and above average profits. It looks at what organisations can do to achieve genuine competitive advantage through the attitudes and skills of its people.

Performance comprises both results (what we want our people to do) and behaviours (the way we want them to do it). You may need to agree both to get the outcomes required.

A sales coach needs to take into account the needs of their coachee, in learning or enhancing a skill. Be aware when developing skills that different people learn in different ways. This means that as a coach you may need to adapt your style. Your aim is to use an approach that will help your coachee become confident and capable in the skill area.

When analysing performance, it is important to carry out an objective measurement.

There are two key elements to setting performance standards. You need to define, communicate and gain commitment to both of these if you want to develop a high performing coachee.

One of the hardest things to determine as a coach is whether a shortfall in performance is due to mindset or skills/knowledge. The table below provides some questions you can ask yourself to determine whether there is an ability or motivation need – or both.

Retentions and referrals are a good measure of business success and suggest you have engaged, motivated employees.

Our Licence to Coach™ program has a clear focus on tangible and continuous performance results. It is not just about the coaching conversation, it is about incorporating and embracing all facets of performance development and continuous improvement.

In a business context, we describe performance gaps as the difference between an individual’s current performance and what is required of them.

During our journey we sought to understand what influences an individual’s performance. We identified three internal components:

The ability of an individual to deliver the results required of them, or to realise their full potential, can be attributed to four things:

I’d like to continue to develop the theme of sales results in retail and invite comment on some conclusions on how to be better than the rest.

Why is it that some retail staff delight us with their quality of service and some frustrate us to the point of anger? The work done by Prosell over 25 years have highlighted some of the reasons for the dreadful experiences we sometimes have.

Author: Mark BW McDermott, Account Director, Prosell
Original Article published by Prosell UK

Customer service in Australia has had consistently poor feedback from international benchmarking organisations, as well as surveys conducted in Australia. 

There is no shortage of literature and analysis giving endless advice on our Gen Y challenge. Where do we find them? How do we attract them? How in heavens do we hang on to them once we’ve got them?

Author: Beverley Froud, Consultant and Trainer at Prosell
Original Article published by Prosell UK

Prosell has been present in Australia for 17 years, but has a history extending back to its foundation by Peter Fullbrook in 1985.  Over this period the company has developed significantly and has helped organisations ar

Author: Deborah Brown, Prosell USA Senior Consultant
Original Article published by Prosell UK

Australia has an interesting set of challenges when it comes to making sure communication works properly.  Our language and cultural influences come initially from Europe and the US and more recently from countries aroun

Author: Deborah Brown, Prosell USA Senior Consultant
Original Article published by Prosell UK

In Australia we see a trend that is reflected in many organisations around the world.  As customers become more knowledgeable and are able to learn about products and services on line, they tend to

Author: Mark BW McDermott, Account Director
Original Article published by Prosell UK

Customer Service in Australia has a poor reputation compared to the other countries around the world.  An international study across 10 countries exploring public attitudes towards customer service has found that 40 per cent of Australians f

Author: Guy Sellwood Managing Director Prosell Learning Ltd and VP Americas
Original Article published by Prosell UK

In Australia we face some unique people management challenges.  Because of the size of the econom

Author: Mark BW McDermott Account Director Prosell UK
Original Article published by Prosell UK

In Australia Sales Managers have some quite unique challenges. Most carry targets and have to look after sales people spread over large areas.

Author: Mark BW McDermott Account Director Prosell UK
Original Article published by Prosell UK

Many of us have experienced poor sales behaviour and as a result a lot of customers (and sales people!) have a mixed view of the profession. 

Author: Mark BW McDermott Account Director Prosell UK
Original Article published by Prosell UK

In Australia Sales Managers have some quite unique challenges.  Most carry targets and have to look after sales people spread over large areas. 

Individuals – employees - are the foundation of an organisation. Their behaviours drive the organisation’s behaviour. To change peoples’ behaviour we need to understand how a person’s attitudes, personality, perceptions and learning influence his or her behaviour.

It's Follow Through, Not Follow Up.

The elements which research has shown have a major impact on commercial performance.

Your sales process may be badly broken… and might not know it!  Sales processes are like filters through which you view the customer world.  You may be seeing “normal” attrition in your pipeline when, in fact, a better process might convert twice as many prospects.

Once you have mastered the techniques of effective communication you now need to utilise these communication techniques to obtain accurate and complete information to enable you to work effectively with your customers in providing solutions for them.

The 7 Step Prosell Process

STRESS – BURNOUT – ATTRITION – LOSING CUSTOMERS?
Call centres have brought with them a challenging mix of people problems including; higher than average levels of stress, attrition, burn out, plus loyalty and motivation problems.

Characteristics of a Trainer
AS A GOOD COMMUNICATOR

You can plan your work pipeline as carefully as possible. Still, it happens to all of us. Sometimes you get absolutely slammed with projects that are all due at the exact same time. So how do you cope?

DO'S
Start, however briefly, with a personal comment.  Break the Ice.
Show sincere interest in them as people; find areas of common involvement; be candid and open.

Tip #1 – Take control of your meeting times

Effective telephone practices
We have all used the telephone most of our lives and most of us think we use it well.  These are, however some telephone practices that work especially well in business and form a basis for establishing a good relationship with customers.

In the cost and productivity conscious world we live in, the role of Learning and Development continues to come under scrutiny.  Like all divisions of a flourishing business, the Learning and Development department needs to show how it justifies its cost and can show a measurable return on investment.

You've probably seen advice about why it's a great idea to maintain a rolling to-do list of projects -- big and small -- that you need to get done. Some efficiency experts recommend writing a to-do list each morning, in which you meticulously transfer incomplete to-dos from the old list to the new one every day.

Think of a situation at work or in the past or in the present where you want to be more assertive.

Tactics
The situation is:

The Training Behaviours

PROCEDURAL
Statements referring to structure, procedure or sequence of instruction.

Workshop led by Peter Fullbrook

DO’S
Support their dreams and intuitions.
Leave time for socialising.

DO'S
Prepare your “case” in advance.
Approach them in a straightforward, direct way; stick to business.

DO'S
Be clear, specific, brief and to the point.
Stick to business.

The word communication comes from the Latin root word “communis” which means common.
- a common or shared understanding.

Before we refer back to the Probing triangle understand that we ask effect questions in order to identify explicit needs. If we ask only situation/problem questions and attempt to sell at this point we are selling against implied needs.

Coaching Skills
There are eight key behaviours that have been shown to consistently achieve results when coaching, there are:

One of thekey differences between successful and average salespeople is their attitude and approach to prospecting.  Average salespeople regard prospecting as a necessary evil which consists of ‘hitting the phone’, or ‘trawling the database’.

Your challenge is not just getting prospects into the pipeline, but getting the right prospect… right at the point when he or she is ready to buy.  Here’s a seven-step program for accomplishing this:

Forget the facts - it's going to get tough says Australia's perpetually pessimistic forecaster Access Economics.

Follow these guidelines and you will make more appointments.

Would prospects rate you as a sales person with charisma? It's that special kind of charm or appeal that attracts people to like and trust you.

Power is the ability to get things done.  You could say that management is the art of ensuring that things get done. Yet what's so striking about most organizations is that so little management is effective.

All customers want the same 12 things, regardless of who they are, who is selling to them or what they’re buying:

It’s a common misconception that prospecting for new customers means opening the floodgates to new opportunities. The marketing group supposedly supplies the sales group with a long list of potential customers, which the sales reps contact en masse, hoping to generate new business.

Whenever undertaking performance improvement, managers need to keep four key principles in mind.  These principles can be easily remembered by the mnemonic CASH:

We have always known that the sales manager occupies a key role.  Now, more than ever, sales teams have to be ‘fit for the fight’ and the manager is the key to this. 

Managers have, as a key part of their job, the need to help team members understand their performance.  One way of doing this is through performance counselling.

Traditionally talked about and accepted in a sporting context, the importance and benefits of workplace coaching are now well appreciated and seen to be a key component of a manager’s job.

B2B cold calling fails because most people sound like they are making a cold call.

Here’s an example:

Prosell has spent over 28 years putting in place sales performance improvement strategies for clients across the globe.

The Net Promoter Score-method has quickly gained popularity as a powerful business tool, which in a simple, but effective way measures a company’s result and at the same time indicates what the future growth prospects are based on “the customer’s willingness to recommend their experience to others”.

Managers have been described as people who control the activities of others and are responsible for carrying out, through individuals/groups in their charge, the policies and intentions of the higher levels of management: their job is to achieve objectives through the people for whom they are responsible. 

When dealing with a difficult customer it is important that the attitude you display helps the customer overcome the problem.  Displaying the incorrect attitude will lead to antagonism and the person will then be spoiling for a fight; this will make matters worse.

This article looks at the fundamentals of why sales training is so ineffective and what you can do about it.  Let’s start with some context:

According to Dettaman and Sternberg (Transfer on Trial 1996) 86% of skills training fails to transfer into the workplace, and of the 14% that does there is dissipation within four months. 

New, independent research (Source: SEC Solutions Research, Sales Executive Council research) has recently been published on the impact of good, consistent coaching on sales effectiveness.

There are eight key benefits to managers of coaching (and, more broadly, to an organisation of adopting a coaching culture) as opposed to instructing, training or ‘telling’.

People buy from people.  You may only meet someone briefly, but your customer will still need to feel wanted and appreciated.  Questions can help us to:

Listening is fundamental to all effective relationships. It is an art - a skill - a discipline. Listening is not the same as hearing. It is possible to hear, understand etc, but not really listen.

Most communication is used to influence an individual or an outcome.

Many managers make the mistake of only thinking about performance either at annual appraisal time or when things have gone badly wrong rather than as an on-going process and part of normal everyday business.

New, independent research (Source: SEC Solutions research, Sales Executive Council Research) has recently been published on the impact of good, consistent coaching on sales effectiveness.  In the spirit of our articles – insightful and brief – we wanted to share this research with you in a series of 4 articles over the next 8 weeks.

A good leader not only has great knowledge and insight, but the softer people skills to utilize them. Still, for every manager there's a fine line between being empathetic and friendly and being a feckless pushover.

“There’s no doubt about it, questions persuade more powerfully than any other form of verbal behaviour.  That’s not just in selling.  Studies of negotiation, management interactions, performance interviews and group discussions ... have all come up with the same basic fact.  There is a clear statistical association between the use of questions and the success of the interaction”

To test whether you are listening as well as you should be, check for the following danger signals:

In addition to the opposites of the positive attitudes and behaviours set out above, the Trainer may also express other views, opinions and beliefs and act in ways that may have a negative impact on the training relationship.  Some of the more damaging of these negative attitudes and behaviours are:

Prosell wishes to stay in touch with its clients and business colleagues and we believe the best way of doing this is to send out brief, insightful and interesting articles that we believe will make a difference to sales performance.

Active listening is based not just on the words themselves, but also on the likely thoughts and feelings of the customer. It typically requires the use of clarification – checking your understanding in some way, or asking for some additional information. It also requires a very high degree of concentration.

Where it is possible, the Trainer should attempt to encourage the delegate to come up with ideas and suggestions for improvement or development which, they can then both evaluate.  However, there may be occasions when the Trainer is the obvious source of feasible options or alternatives. 

The word communication comes from the Latin root word “communis” which means common.
- a common or shared understanding.

The previous three articles in this series have looked at the critical nature of sales coaching and shown it is a key differentiator in success or failure in salespeople.  They have also shown that most sales managers coach, badly, inconsistently or not at all.

Establish the right atmosphere and adopt a helpful attitude.

The skills of training are those which are actually employed in the training modules.  They include the following:

Mutually beneficial contracts tend to emerge when the negotiating process is cooperative, rather than competitive. The idea is to come up with a win-win scenario, where both companies feel happy with the result.

In a recent research piece for Forrester’s, Claire Schooley proposes that interactive learning activities, such as simulations, immersive learning and serious gaming are a more effective learning medium for the Millennials (workers born between 1980 and 2000).

By Peter Fullbrook, Founder, Prosell

Research tells us that classroom sales training (whether it be real or virtual) is only appropriate for 15% of development needs (Rummler 1995). Not only does this cause concern about the use and abuse of sales training events, it also raises the tantalising question of what is appropriate if training