egyii blog

To support the business in changing and turbulent times, HR leaders are looking for ways to support their stakeholders and offer new ideas/programmes above and beyond the norm.

Why? Due to the pressure of the business. The pressure for profitability and the pressure to contribute more to the business.

How are the HR leaders looking to do this? The HR leaders are looking to supply the right tools, and some of the old tools may not work anymore. They also feel that they need to add more value to the business.

So what might work today?

We all know that HR needs to understand the business and needs to link learning and development to the business goals and strategies. That is a no brainer.

To date, HR leaders have exausted their efforts with the sales and sales management teams by providing sales training programmes that offer a scripted, burdensome process. These programmes have brought in results, but the HR Leaders should take it one step further- even as  the executives continue to look  for quick answers-and quick results.

Wait a minute. Quick answers and quick results? You have tried programmes that offer the quick answers and results already. Some work and some don’t. What to do next?

As an HR leader, shouldn’t you be in the position to advise the business? Shouldn’t that be your key role?

To provide value you should look to be a proactive advisor. And as an advisor, you can position business differentiators.

How to differentiate?

Soft skills.

Soft skills are truly in need today. And I don’t recommend that becuse Egyii’s business evolves around that. I (and others) believe  it.

Soft skills need to complement the current sales process and the product training.

Soft skills are the “glue” to keep it all together.

So why is it difficult to pitch to management? Is it because soft skills are difficult to measure? They don’t show “direct” results? If that is on the mind of your executive team, they need advice. Your advice.

Soft skills, such as relationship skills, are important as they complement the drive for immediate results.

They also build the pipeline.

…and they turn a prospect into a client and keep the client a client.

If you are focusing on programmes that bring immediate results, chances are you are losing the client, because they know when the sales pressure is on. Relationship building soft skills help relieve this pressure and give you the ability to sell immediately and medium/ long term…without losing the client.

Isn’t that what the business REALLY wants?

HR Leaders have the opportunity to be more active as advisors. Contribute more of your ideas to the business. Add more value by advising the business and offering new tools such as more targeted soft skills.

It may difficult to convince the stakeholders- give it a try.

For more, see:

Building and fostering client relationships.

Building and rebuilding trust.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Tough times require resiliency, especially in a cut-throat business like insurance. Your company’s branding, name and reputation, products won’t do it. It’s all about your people.

With pressure from the economic downturn, a large Singapore based insurance company needed their financial planners to deliver every time.  However, the financial planners were not getting the right support they needed from their direct management. Read how Egyii’s Andrew Sidwell helped turn the situation around. Coaching for sales performance

Andrew Sidwell, Team Egyii, Singapore

Customer experience is comprised of three things: the Technology, the Design and the Connect.

But why does “customer experience” seem only to be emphasized in the mass market such hotels, airlines, retail banks and stores and telephone companies?

Shouldn’t it apply to every business encounter or client facing scenario?

Of course.

Let’s look at  the area that is most overlooked-the “Connect,” which is the face to face encounter and where real relationship and business building opportunities exist.

When I personally operate, I look at every face to face encounter as an opportunity to connect and create a great personal experience for the person I am connecting with.

Think about it.

Whether I am calling on a CEO, a Managing Director, a Human Resource Leader or a Learning and Development Officer…..it doesn’t matter.

If you don’t create the right experience, you lose the opportunity. Period.

Let’s look at the reality of it all.  When you walk into a retail store do you like being harangued by the retail clerk? Followed after when you need no help at all. “This would look good on you.” Who asked for your comment?

Or in a restaurant where the waiter obnoxiously starts recommending dishes-without asking what you like or what you might prefer.

What is the difference between the retail and restaurant scenario and a larger, complex, more expensive business to business or business to client sales scenario where the product portfolio-bits/bytes, features/benefits-is the focus?

There often is no difference. In both instances the encounter lacks sensitivity.

Why does it lack sensitivity? Because the encounter is all about the company and/or the intent of the deliverer. It is all about YOU and not the client.

In both instances, if you add sensitivity, real client focus (and a little bit of empathy), you will see amazing results.

Focus on the client.

Put yourself into the client’s shoes.

You are the front to your company, your product, yourself.

Think GREAT PERSONAL EXPERIENCE!

Everytime.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, HOT HOT Singapore

No longer can global or major accounts programmes rely on decisions being made in mother countries. Decisions now need to be made on a local, Asia Pacific level, whether it is in Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Shanghai or Tokyo.

And no longer can account teams rely on relationships alone. They must also add value.

Adding value means understanding what is on the mind of the client and giving them the tools to meet their personal and business goals. It’s not all about bits and bytes, bandwidth or speed or bells and whistles. To meet the goals, it’s all about understanding their problems and where they are in the decision making cycle…and being sensitive to that.

Neil Rackham, of Huthwaite and SPIN, was not a salesperson, but a behavioural psychologist. He studied how buyers bought and did not focus on how sellers should sell. He built a simple yet powerful tool to understand the buying cycle, or decision making process. He added sensitivity to the buying cycle.

In the buying cycle, there are multiple stages..changes over time, recognition of needs, evaluation of options, resolution of concerns, decision, implementation. No matter where you enter the buying cycle, you need to work (by continually adding value) with your client until he enters the “recognition of needs” area. This is the crucial time to be side by side, collaborating with your client to build the solution. (Rackham  also recognises that all of this takes time, so focus on medium-long term, not short term).

Once you are at the recognition of needs phase, you should understand how the client makes the decision.

What motivates him to buy?

The client (or buyer) typically has four levels of questions when it comes to the question of motivation when buying:

1) The product and its characteristics/features

2) A solution to the problem

3) A good business partner

4) Someone we can trust

Buyers state that they want want the first or second and ocassionally the third. Most sales programmes/processes focus on levels two and three- focusing on identifying the buyers’ needs through consultative selling.

Levels one through three are rational and impersonal. The fourth level, a person we can trust, is far more powerful.

If you understand the buying cycle and ultimately what motivates your client when buying, you are one step ahead of your competitors.

There is a lot more to it than that for global/major accounts selling but understanding the crucial aspects of buying are vital.

*Derived from Trust-based Selling by Charles H. Green.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

(The author ran the Anixter Asia Pacific Global Accounts programme in the earlier part of this century. There are certainly a few things he did well but there are a lot of things he could have done better. He wishes he had known all of this then.)

Products aren’t the only things that need marketing. People do too. How do you build your presence for your clients- to market yourself and your company?

In a world where millions, if not billions, of people converge on a digital platform, communicate via mobile phones and meet face to face, to really establish a presence, a salesperson should create his own personal brand.

Twitter. Facebook. Linked In. Blogs. All free ways to create your extended presence.

Your extended presence  is a great way to add value to your current relationship. Post and share your content and others’. Build upon subject matter that is relevant to your clients’ needs. Base it on the last conversation you had with your client.

A few helpful hints…peruse the following; Dan Schawbel’s articles as he is the personal branding expert who pens Personal Branding Magazine and, of course,  the business guru Tom Peters, whose  article The Brand Called You was originally written in 1997.

After all, the client’s relationship and loyalty is with the salesperson, not with the company.

Heat up the branding iron.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

“I understand best when I hear, see and do!”

To be competent at any skill each participant needs to understand it both conceptually and behaviourally; have opportunities to practice it, get feedback on how well he or she is performing the skill and then use the skill enough so that it becomes integrated into their behavioural repertoire back in the workplace.

 Through eight years of successful client sales learning and development engagements I have developed the following tried and tested approach that encompasses the most effective learning dimensions to start the process of achieving sustainable behavioural change in your sales team.

To help participants acquire the skills, each Transformational Sales Module follows these steps:

Review of learning outcomes and behavioural standards and how they relate to enhanced performance in the business

Self Assessment Exercise to obtain a baseline performance level

Present Skill Concepts– either through experiential learning activities, case studies or presentations

Modeling exercise that allows participants to observe others exhibiting the desired skill behaviours

Participants practice application of skills and behaviours in structured activities based on job realistic scenarios

Participants receive feedback using the behavioural skills standards checklist to sign off as an indication of their level of mastery

Application questions to provide opportunities to check understanding of how skill behaviours relate classroom learning to real life situations

Personal Action Plans are set  to identify the development of specific personal behavioural changes to implement for successful transfer of knowledge and skills into the workplace

From my experience, this is what I believe to be a formula for learning success.

Andrew Sidwell, Team Egyii, Singapore

“Effective networking is about building relationships with others who can refer you once they’ve come to trust you, have confidence in you and feel loyal to you. This truly is the key to networking success. And this process takes time.”  Duct Tape Marketing, “The Keys to a Referral Relationship.”

What is the easiest way to get new business? Referrals.

Is it easy to get referrals? No and yes.

The Dilemma

Most salespeople and managers agree that referrals are the best way to get leads for new business. There are methods for getting referrals, however it sill remains “difficult” for a salesperson to get them.

So how do we “speed up” the process and make it simple?

Build the Relationship

As for “speeding up” the process, there are no methodologies that can really get you to where you need to be to ask for referrals quickly. Too often salespeople jump on the opportunity too early, at the wrong time. It takes time. So be patient.

Where to start? Make steps to build the relationship and add commercial and personal value. The best way to build a relationship and add value is by establishing  trust. In order to build trust for refferals, you should understand the components of trustworthiness. 

The Components of Trustworthiness

The components of trustworthiness, in the world of the The Trusted Advisor, reside in the Trust Quotient.

The Trust Quotient consists of the Trust Equation=

C=Credibility

R=Reliability

I=Intimacy

S=Self-orientation

C=Credibility has to do with the words we speak. In a sentence, we might say, “I can trust what she says about intellectual property; she is very credible on the subject.*

By contrast, reliability has to do with actions. We might say, for example, “If he says he’ll deliver the product tomorrow, I trust him, because he’s dependable.” *

Intimacy refers to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something. We might say, “I can trust her with that information; she’s never violated my confidentiality before, and she would never embarrass me.” *

Self-orientation refers to the focus of the person in question. In particular, whether the person’s focus is primarily on himself or herself or on the other person. We might say, “I can’t trust him on this deal—I don’t think he cares enough about me, he’s focused on what he gets out of the deal.” Or—more commonly—“I don’t trust him—I think he was too concerned about how he was appearing, so he wasn’t really paying attention.”

Keep in mind that Credibility and Reliability are the easiest aspects of the Trust Equation. Intimacy and Self Orientation are by far more difficult to attain.

(*for more information, see Trust in Business: The Core Concepts from Charles H. Green, Trusted Advisor Associates)

Simply Ask for Referrals

So, once you establish the relationship, you can simply ask for referrals. The biggest problem is, salespeople just don’t bother approaching clients for referrals. How many times do salespeople actually ask for a referral? rarely. Ray Silverstein suggests a few simple but great pointers in his article, Get More Referrals by Asking.

So, build the relationship and ask. It may take some time but it sure is simple.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

How do front-line sales professionals (Relationship Managers, face to face sales, client managers, Etc) effectively connect through high impact conversations?

Challenges to achieveing great sales conversations

There is no doubt that achieving sales targets, regardless of how they are achieved, has become the principle means of measuring success in many companies around the globe, regardless of what they all say they do for their customers.

That then becomes the root of the problem.

From that, we have observed that many conversations with customers are often driven by the sales person’s self interests on the basis of a product promotion, the profitability of a product, the amount of commission or incentive the sales person will receive or urgency to hit a specific target, a business need to increase market share etc. regardless of whether or not that is the right solution for the customer. 

Essentially there is rarely anybody taking a look at the overall picture for the customer, or even conversational guidelines to ensure that sales staff work together in the customer’s best interests.

So how do we  connect effectively and maxmise performance?

There are many well established approaches to selling; relationship selling, customer value selling, needs based selling etc. to suit different business needs and the current economic environment. Terms may change, tough times come and go, but the best practices of having a quality conversation that focuses on the clients best interests versus the sellers to maximize sales performance is still regarded as critical to success.

This would apply to anyone who manages a portfolio of customers on a relationship basis rather than a transactional one and seeks to enhance their ability, knowledge and behaviour to deliver a meaningful sales conversation that engages the client and deepens relationships with both new and existing prospects.

What will make this work?

In order to make programme that changes the focus from “us” to “them” successful, frontline sales professionals people need to be able to:

Assess their own communication strengths and weaknesses and the impact they have on others

Adapt and respond to the communication style, drivers of emotional needs and life stage of their clients

Develop compelling value positioning statements for opening conversations with prospects and existing clients over the telephone and in person

Ask for and gather information using bridging statements and reflective listening techniques to identify opportunities to create value for clients

Summarise and align solutions to the customers’ true needs to establish greater rapport with the client

Keep the client engaged in the conversation when handling client uncertainty or resistance to opportunity

Demonstrate conversational closing statements to confidently ask for the business

For related materials please see:

Maximising sales performance and skills.

Building and rebuilding trust.

Andrew Sidwell, Team Egyii, Singapore