Sales Process Drives Results: An Interview with Jeffery L. Blake

Early in the interview, Jeff emphasized how important it is to commit to and stick to a process to generate better results,

“In sales, staying the course and having a high level of confidence goes a long way. The best advice I’ve had moving up through various sales positions is that you have to slow down in order to go fast. When you allow the methodology to drive the opportunity and you’re doing all the right things, in the right order, it always ends up taking a shorter amount of time. So often, desperate salespeople try to cut a corner, or do something unnatural that takes things sideways, or worse, upsets the customer and kills the opportunity.”

What we’ve found at SalesGym in working with thousands of salespeople over the years is they can over react to a response they get from a prospect or customer and then move too quickly toward presenting product information without completing a good questioning or discovery step as Jeff explains,

“One of the worst habits salespeople make is when they cut corners while attempting to qualify an opportunity. Another commonly used colloquialism is, the rep gets happy ears. They’re hearing what they want to hear. They ask questions to get the answer they want to hear, instead of asking the difficult qualifying questions. Always getting positive responses enable them to move the deal ahead. Neglecting the hard questions end up causing a lot of extra work, and often ends with an opportunity that is not qualified.”

One of the best habits salespeople can get into is summarizing back to the prospect what they’ve learned once they feel they thoroughly understand their situation and ending that summary with a simple question like, “what else would you add to help clarify what’s most important to you even more?”

End Sales Conversations With Clear Action Steps

From interviews with hundreds of sales executives, one of the top three mistakes salespeople make on sales calls or meetings is ending the meeting without any clear results as Jeff explains,

“The bad habit that jumps out most to me is when sales reps do not set clear next steps. That’s the difference between a pro and someone with less experience. Many reps want to get out of the meeting on a positive note instead of asking a challenging question to truly advance the sales cycle.”

Often, what’s missing on sales calls that end poorly is a clear and effective agenda to start the meeting. When the agenda is customer focused and clear about the objectives, we are much more likely to lead the call toward steps that advance the sale process.  Jeff points out another key benefit of a clear agenda,

“The best sales reps will start the call outlining the next steps first, saying, ‘We’re going to talk about XYZ and if we’re all on the same page at the end, I envision us going down this path.’ that helps qualify the opportunity. If the prospect says, ‘No, I am not interested in doing that,’ then we may think we are further in the qualification than we really are. That means we have to stop, reset, go through the basics, and make sure we fully qualifying the opportunity. If the prospect likes the outlined next steps, then there’s no awkward pause at the end of the call and the rep can say, ‘Okay, great. We’re all on the same page, the next step would be to schedule a visit, or a customer reference, or a demo.’”

If sales managers want to see these habits develop in their sales teams, then they’ve got to reinforce them as Jeff explains,

“Having regular debriefs, immediately after a customer engagement, is really critical. Not waiting until the next morning, but really nailing it down, especially if there’s behaviors that need correcting. You have to get to that immediately afterwards so it’s fresh and everyone can relate to it.”

Talk Less, Listen More

In addition to starting all sales conversations with an effective agenda that leads to clear action steps, another important habit to break is simply talking too much as Jeff points out,

“Reps that are less experienced about where they’re at in the sales cycle think they can talk their way into convincing a prospect to do something. The reality is the opposite happens and people shut down, they often simply want the salesperson to listen more, talk less, and understand the problem before offering a solution. Those are the core blocking and tackling skills that everybody knows and understands but often need to be reinforced. Especially when we get into the last month of the quarter and people are going fast and trying to take shortcuts.”

The best sales managers help their salespeople to see and understand the habits they’ve gotten into that are hurting their results. For the most part, bad sales habits do not change unless a sales manager can somehow get through as Jeff advises,

“If you are new to management, get people to understand that they have a bad habit. Sometimes people don’t have that self-awareness. Once they understand it’s a bad habit, help them understand the alternatives. For example, ‘Don’t fill the dead air with talking about something, wait those couple extra seconds for the customer to respond.’”

Deliver Insights That Matter To The Customer

More has been written and discussed about insight led selling approaches introduced in “The Challenger Sale” than all other sales approaches combined over the last 5 years. Nearly every client we work with brings up their desire to see their people become better at using helpful insights to challenge the thinking of resistant prospects. Salespeople that truly master this approach have a better understanding of the customer’s business and how to solve problems as Jeff explains,

“A big misconception for sales individuals is that they need to understand a lot of the technology in order to help a customer solve a problem. Probably the worst thing to do is spending time trying to learn all of the complexities of technology. It’s so much more important to understand the business and the processes, and how that’s integrated into that businesses core competencies. That’s much more of a challenge to understand than the technologies of a given solution.”

What we’ve found is most salespeople can learn to deliver better insights by learning to share what other customers are doing to solve similar problems. They can also learn what steps they’re taking to make progress in ways their competitors aren’t and then connecting those decisions to the products and services that can enable it to happen.

SalesGym is a research, consulting, and training company that works with and learns from sales teams all over the world and has refined a coaching and training process that trains sales teams the way elite athletes are trained.  More insights and articles from us can be found on our RESOURCES PAGE.