Advanced Sales & Sales Management Training
for the Experienced Professional
Present
“Account Planning For
Sales Team Success”
November 18, 2013
Las Vegas NV
Questions? You may contact Jim at:
800-526-0074
jim@pancero.com
Name ____________________________________________________
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc., Dallas TX 75007
www.pancero.com
Advanced Sales & Sales Management Training
for the Experienced Professional
ABOUT JIM PANCERO
Jim Pancero has the most advanced, leading-edge "business-to-business"
sales and sales management training available today. Everything he does
is extensively researched and has one bottom line focus...to increase an
organization's strategic competitive advantage and market uniqueness.
Jim's work focuses on sales organizations with high priced, large and/or
competitively complex products and services. His information-intensive
keynote speeches, training programs and in-depth consulting work detail
his innovative selling processes and strategies for the new economy and
global marketplace.
Even during a sixty-minute keynote, Jim provides the most experienced
members of his audience with proven, immediately usable advanced ideas
to increase their competitive advantage and enhance their selling
processes. His combination of humor and real-world examples evolved
from his experience researching and training in over 80 different industries.
Pancero.com
Jim has been directly involved in "business-to-business" selling for over 40
years. Six of those years were spent successfully selling the largest
computer systems for the Data Processing Division of the IBM Corporation.
During Jim's prestigious IBM career he earned several awards including the
coveted "Golden Circle" designation annually awarded to the top 5% of
their international sales force.
In 1982, Jim founded his advanced sales training and consulting company.
Since then, Jim has conducted over 3,000 presentations or consulting days
for 600 companies providing a career average of five events per client.
Over 90% of Jim's clients utilize his services more than once. You can learn
more about Jim at Pancero.com as well view video clips on YouTube ®
Questions? Email: jim@pancero.com
Jim Pancero, Inc., Dallas TX
Phone: 800.526.0074 ♦ Fax: 866.238.1692
www.Pancero.com
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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SELLING SKILLS REQUIRED FOR SELLING SUCCESS
Strategic
Focus and Positioning
- Communicating Your Philosophy and Market Position
- Answering the Question "Why, based on all of the competitive alternatives
available to me, do I want to buy from you?"
Tactical
Tools and Controls
- Understanding and Controlling Your "ID to Close" Selling Process
- How to Call "Higher and Wider" Within a Customer's Organization
- How to Utilize the Rest of Your Team in Your Selling Process
- Time and Territory Management Skills
- Effective Negotiation Skills
Operational
Skills and Abilities
- Steps of a Sales Call
- Personality Awareness Skills ("Why people buy")
- Persuasive Communication Skills
- Product and Industry Knowledge
Attitude & Energy
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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INCREASING YOUR SELLING SKILLS
- What to expect from strengthened strategic selling skills
- The ability of your sales team to sell at higher margins because they
understand you are not in a price driven market
- The ability to answer persuasively a customer asking them “why, based on all
the alternatives available to me do I want to buy from you?”
- What to expect from strengthened tactical selling skills
- Sales professionals planning their daily and weekly activities or travel
schedules in advance and in a logical way that is visible to everyone
within your sales team.
- Sales professionals better able to answer where any customer currently is and
what they have planned to maintain or grow their business
- Sales professionals being more proactive and initiating competitive protection
activities sooner and with a higher degree of effectiveness
- More ongoing new business prospecting efforts
- What to expect from strengthened operational selling skills
- A more consistent and persuasive sales professional able to handle a wider
range of customers, their concerns, their needs and expectations.
- A sales team who will come across to your customers as more customer
focused, more professional and of more value than your competition.
- What to expect from strengthened attitude and energy selling skills
- A sales team who has earned customer's loyalty due to their proven professionalism,
values, and commitment to helping.
- A more energized, excited and harder working sales professional.
- A "coachable" sales team open to your suggestions and guidance.
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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“WHAT CAN I TALK ABOUT WITH MY SALES REP FOR AN HOUR?”
Strategic
Focus and Positioning
Future
- Forecasts and quotas
- Communicating Your Philosophy
and Market Position
- Answering the Question "Why, based on all
of the competitive alternatives available
you?"
- Strategic planning
- Coaches team “what to do”
before anything is done
Tactical
Tools and Controls
Today
- Understanding and Controlling Your "ID to
Close" Selling Process
- How to Call "Higher and Wider" Within a
Customer's Organization
- How to Utilize the Rest of Your Team in
Your Selling Process
- Time and Territory Management Skills
- Effective Negotiation Skills
- Status reports
- Call planning meetings
- Customer sales calls
- Problem resolution activities
Operational
Skills and Abilities
History
- Steps of a Sales Call
- Personality Awareness Skills
("Why people buy")
- Persuasive Communication Skills
- Product and Industry Knowledge
- Call reports
- Expense reports
- "What happened?" meetings
- Only complains about what wasn’t
done after the fact
Attitude & Energy
- The “Coaching Zone” occurs when you keep your coaching
conversations...
- Tactical
- Strategic
- Future focused
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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SUGGESTED TWICE A MONTH ONE-HOUR SALES COACHING
SESSION AGENDA
10 minutes – History
- “What’s been happening?”
- “What’s the latest?”
10 minutes – “Crisis” and transactional closing problems
- “What’s it going to take to close this business?”
- “What’s it going to take to solve this problem?”
10 minutes – Review and discuss planned actions with important Account #1
- Use the questions of the “Account Planning Form” from our last training
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
To whom are you talking?
What equipment/products do they currently have?
What additional equipment/products do you think they will need?
What other competitors do you expect to be going after this business?
Who do you think you should be strengthening your relationship with at this
account?
6. How do you plan to position our company’s philosophies and messaging with this
customer?
7. What is your 90-day plan to work to win this business?
8. What can you do to increase your competitive advantage with this account?
9. What else can you do to get your profitability up on this sale/proposal?
10. How can you best position our higher price?
10 minutes – Review and discuss planned actions with important Account #2
10 minutes – Review and discuss planned actions with important Account #3
10 minutes – Recap and summarize identified action plans and completion deadlines
- These six ten-minute sessions are minimum meeting requirements
- OK to talk about anything else in these meetings
- OK if it takes three hours to complete your one-hour coaching session
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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ACCOUNT PLANNING FORM - Page 1 of 4 - Where we are now
Account Name: ______________________________________________
1. Important top contacts you have already met:
Status - Champion (and supporter of your company)
- Friend (of your company)
- Neutral (toward any company)
- Biased (toward another company)
- Unknown (where they stand)
Name
______________________________
Job Title
_________________________
Status
______
______________________________
_________________________
______
______________________________
_________________________
______
______________________________
_________________________
______
2. Current equipment or services used:
Equipment Type
______________
Brand
Model #
_________ ______________
Date Acquired
______________
Bought
New/Used
_________
______________
_________ ______________
______________
_________
______________
_________ ______________
______________
_________
3. Products requested by customer or expected to be proposed
Equipment Type
______________
Model #
______________
Why?
_________________________
Expected
Delivery
_________
______________
______________
_________________________
_________
______________
______________
_________________________
_________
4. Who else do we expect will be proposing?
Competitor
Strengths
Weaknesses
______________
_________________________
__________________________
______________
_________________________
__________________________
______________
_________________________
__________________________
5. Who currently has the competitive advantage to win this business?
_____________________________________________________________________
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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ACCOUNT PLANNING FORM - Page 2 of 4 - Where we want to go
Account Name: ______________________________________________
6. Most Important top contacts still want/need to meet:
Importance
- Critical (to us winning this business)
- Important (to us winning this business)
- Positive (for us to be talking with them)
- Unknown (what their real impact will be on their final decision to buy)
Name
______________________________
Job Title
_________________________
Status
______
______________________________
_________________________
______
______________________________
_________________________
______
______________________________
_________________________
______
7. Our current competitive strengths and weaknesses with this customer:
Strengths
Weaknesses
_____________________________
____________________________________
_____________________________
____________________________________
_____________________________
____________________________________
8. How we plan to position our company and our philosophies and messaging with
this customer:
Our selling message ______________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________
9. Key goals we want to accomplish with this customer
Goal #1 _________________________________________________________
Goal #2 _________________________________________________________
Goal #3 _________________________________________________________
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
Page 7
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ACCOUNT PLANNING FORM - Page 3 of 4 - How we plan to win this business
Your planned selling strategy with this customer
Selling “to-do’s” and action plans to win this business
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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Sales Professional: ___________________________________________
Account Planning Form For Existing Accounts – Page 4 of 4
Account Name__________________________
1st Quarter
2nd Quarter
Date Prepared ___________
3rd Quarter
4th Quarter
Account Growth
Plan
- Replacement units
- Additional units
Contact Growth
Plan
- Existing accounts
- New contacts
- New locations
Business/Executive
Review & Growth
Planning
Introduce New
Engineering and
Technical Products
Executive
Involvement
Social
Entertainment
Operational
Reviews
- Service evaluations
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
Page 9
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KEYS TO COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE AND INCREASED SALES
1) Strong response to “Why buy from you?” consistently delivered by your entire
team.
2) Defined (and coached to) “Selling Process Best Practices.”
- “ID to Close” new business selling process.
- “1/1 to 12/31” processes to support your best customers.
- Operational “Steps of a Sales Call” and “personality flexibility” skills.
3) Proactive “Selling Process” coaching to all team members.
- One hour a week, (for each assigned sales person), discussing “Future Focused”
account and territory planning and strategy.
- Free up time to coach.
- Each sales person prepares written plan for his or her five most important accounts.
- Break up the year into 2-4 month selling campaigns.
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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TEN QUESTION ADVANCED SALES TEST
Evaluate a salesperson (or yourself) assigning one of five scores to each question:
5 – Consistently excels and demonstrates an advanced effectiveness at this skill.
4 – Occasionally succeeds at demonstrating control and mastery of this skill.
3 – Shows some control and understanding of this skill.
2 – Show weak or little control or understanding of this skill.
1 – Has low to little awareness or attempts to utilize this skill.
Personal Persuasiveness
Q1 - Personal Persuasiveness With Customers?
- “Good on their feet” in front of customers. Persuasive no matter how brief their selling time.
- Ability to build strong relationships with a full range of personalities, ages, and job positions.
- Strong product/industry skills. Helps customers improve their business and equipment usage.
Q2 – Effective Customer Information Controls?
- All customer contact information kept accurate and up to date.
- Strong history notes on all significant customer activities in your computer system.
Tactical Control Of Your Assigned Territory and Selling Processes
Q3 – Actively Prospecting For New Business?
- Ongoing efforts to discover and sell new applications/equipment to existing customers.
- Ongoing efforts to discover and sell applications/equipment to new or competitive customers.
Q4 – Ability to Maintain And Grow Existing Customers?
- Ability to maintain high customer satisfaction ratings and feedback.
- Successfully handles customer problems and inquiries in a timely and persuasive manner.
- Has developed strong, long-term relationships with majority of customers.
Q5 – Proactive Control of New Business Selling Processes?
- Thinks and plans multiple sales moves ahead with majority of selling opportunities.
- Has a written “selling game plan” in place for all major selling opportunities.
- Can explain next three planned account selling moves or actions at any time for any account.
Q6 – Accurate Forecasting & Ability To Predict Sales Results?
- Develops and maintains a full year sales forecast for assigned territory.
- Ability to predict upcoming wins and losses with a strong degree of accuracy.
- Keeps management updated with ongoing accurate and timely sales forecasts and reports.
Ability to Communicate, Position and Sell Your Uniqueness and Value
Q7 – Ability To Win “Higher Priced” Business?
- Ability to sell your value and competitive uniqueness so you can win a customer’s business
without being the lowest price or without significantly cutting prices or profit margins.
Q8 – Ability To Communicate and Position Competitive Uniqueness and Value?
- Briefly and persuasively communicates your messages of competitive uniqueness and value to all
customer selling opportunities.
Q9 – Strong Competitive Awareness?
- No major competitive losses in your territory.
- Demonstrates strong awareness of competitor’s products, pricing, and selling messages.
- Ability to proactively neutralize and sell against competitive selling messages and strategies.
Commitment to Being “Good Enough To Get Better”
Q10 – Is Coachable With A Positive Attitude And Work Ethic?
- Is a “Student of Selling” trying new ways to sell and seeks coaching advice from others.
- Helps improve others selling skills.
- Committed to helping our team become stronger and more competitive.
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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TWENTY QUESTION SALES LEADERSHIP EVALUATION
Evaluate yourself by circling a number for each question:
1 Non-existent
2 Weak
3 "Just Average"
4
Leading
5
"Best Practice"
Your Role as an Administrator, Problem Solver and Disciplinarian
1
2
3
4
5
#1 - Your skills as an organized administrator are…?
1
2
3
4
5
#2 - Your skills coaching your sales reps through problem solving are…?
1
2
3
4
5
#3 - Your skills managing and coaching the pricing and profitability decisions of your teams are…?
Your Ability to Build and Retain a Sales Team
1
2
3
4
5
#4 - Your “new sales person” searching and interviewing skills are…?
1
2
3
4
5
#5 - Your “new hire” sales training program is…?
1
2
3
4
5
#6 - Your “Performance Plan” program in place for each member of your team is…?
1
2
3
4
5
#7 - Your ongoing “experienced sales team” training process is…?
1
2
3
4
5
#8 - Your accessibility to your sales force is…?
Your Ability to Lead
1
2
3
4
5
#9 - Your sales team would rate their satisfaction level working for you as…?
1
2
3
4
5
#10 - Your amount of “positive focused” communications with your team is..?
1
2
3
4
5
#11 - Your ability to initiate new ideas and account planning conversations with your team is…?
1
2
3
4
5
#12 - Your ability to delegate to your sales team is…?
Your Ability to be a Coach & Strategist of Your Selling Process
1
2
3
4
5
#13 - Your ability to organize and lead your team as a single market force is…?
1
2
3
4
5
#14 - Your team’s ability to communicate a single message of competitive uniqueness
and market leadership is…?
1
2
3
4
5
#15 - Your ongoing new business prospecting process currently in place is…?
1
2
3
4
5
#16 - Your marketing and promotional skills are…?
1
2
3
4
5
#17 - Your ability to commit time to individually coach and strategize with each of
your sales reps are…?
1
2
3
4
5
#18 - Percentage of time spent talking “future focused” with your reps is...?
1
2
3
4
5
#19 - Your ability and time committed to talking “tactical and strategic focused” with
your sales reps are…?
1
2
3
4
5
#20 - Your ability to communicate with customers to help your sales reps get “higher,
wider and deeper” is…?
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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VISIT PANCERO.COM TO ENHANCE YOUR
SALES AND SALES MANAGEMENT TRAINING
- Blog Articles for Sales Pros and Sales Managers to help you with In-House
training. Each article has a "Print & PDF" button that will format the article for
your printer or create a PDF, your choice.
http://www.pancero.com/blog
- MP3's - MP3 audio training by Jim that you can listen to while on the go, can be
played from your phone or tablet.
http://www.pancero.com/free-resourses
- Videos - Watch training videos from Jim. Sales and Sales Management topics
are covered, including new videos covering SWAT Team Selling and more
coming so bookmark the site.
http://www.pancero.com/free-resourses
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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“You Can Always Sell More…By Balancing Your Operational,
Tactical, and Strategic Coaching”
by Jim Pancero
In past articles I have identified the job of a sales manager is to help each and every one of your
people achieve more than they would have achieved if just left alone. An important contributor to
helping your people achieve more with your help is your ability to help each member of your sales
team to increase their operational, tactical, and strategic areas of selling.
In addition, just to make sure we are all using the same terms:
Operational selling skills include strong product knowledge, the ability to utilize the steps of a sales
call and the ability to be flexible enough to talk with a customer in their language and personality
instead of your own.
Tactical skills include all of the multiple-stepped structures and processes of selling that become the
“game plans” or “road maps” to your selling process for both prospects and existing customers.
Strategic selling skills include the ability to communicate your philosophies, values and uniqueness
to a customer.
How Balanced Are Your Operational, Tactical, And Strategic Selling Skills?
Though all three of these skill areas are critical to your success in selling, most salespeople and their
leadership are out of balance. Observing salespeople, I consistently see the majority of salespeople
(and their managers) spend over 90% of their time on operational issues or tasks, 10% on tactical
processes and little or no time on strategic issues.
Consider your last few sales meetings. What did you spend the most time on? Did you discuss with
your team how they can best be positioning your company and products/services vs. your competition
(Strategic)? Did you spend any time discussing how best your team can move a prospect more
efficiently through your “Identify to close” selling process (Tactical)? And how much time did you
spend talking about your sales rep’s current contacts within their important accounts and how they
need to be calling on additional positions so they can get “higher, wider and deeper” within these
accounts (Tactical)?
Or, like most sales teams, did you spend all of your time in your last sales meetings discussing
reports, deadlines, order entry concerns, order shipping problems and who is forgetting to clean out
the refrigerator every Friday afternoon (Operational)? Most salespeople spend all day reactively
responding to the operational demands of their territory, do little longer range planning for either their
prospects or existing customers and all have a different answer when asked why their company is
unique.
In selling, it is almost impossible to gain a competitive advantage based only on operational selling
excellence. Competitive advantages are gained and maintained based on awareness and skills at the
tactical and strategic levels--levels most salespeople are weakest in both understanding and applying.
What is the balance of your sales team’s operational, tactical, and strategic selling skills? Moreover,
what are you doing, as their sales leader, to help strengthen their awareness and skills in each of
these three areas?
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As their leader you need to apply the concepts present in all the quality programs by 1) evaluating
where your people’s skills and awareness are now; 2) identifying and educating your people as to the
“best practices” of selling; and then 3) coaching, leading, teaching and yelling, if necessary, to help
your people move from where they are today to where they need to be with their “best practices” in
order to increase their competitive advantage. Finally, 4) when you team gets closer to the best
practices you’ve set, you then raise the bar to move to an even higher level to continue to improve
your quality as well as your selling success.
Your ability to coach and lead your salespeople requires you to become a student of selling. How can
you teach your salespeople to improve a skill if you do not, as their coach, first understand all of the
“best practice” steps and structures of that skill? The best tennis or golf coaches are the ones who
understand all of the steps and structures of a successful swing, can evaluate the stepped details of
how you are currently hitting the ball, and then offer tips and suggestions to help move you closer to
the defined “best practices” of a proper swing.
The bottom line of sales leadership is that the only way to effectively coach an experienced and
successful sales professional is to understand more about the skills and structures of selling than he
does. You don’t have to be a better salesperson than your people in order to help them, but you do
need to understand all of the steps, structures and philosophies of how selling works so you can
coach even your best people to become better than they are now. This is why I love the concept of “I
know you’re good, but are you good enough to get better?”
Remember that increasing your team’s awareness and ability to use the structures and processes of
selling will increase their consistency and efficiency as sales professionals. And if you can increase
their consistency and efficiency you’ll also increase both their perceived professionalism and overall
selling success.
Suggestions to Help Increase Your Operational, Tactical, and Strategic Coaching Efforts
The solution to helping each member of your sales team to increase their operational, tactical and
strategic selling skills is for you to:
1st - become a student of selling so you can understand and strengthen each selling skill area and
2nd - evaluate the full skill range of each member of your sales team.
Once you’ve identified the strongest and weakest skill areas for each member of your team then your
third effort is to design an individual coaching and training plan so each rep becomes stronger, more
effective, and more successful.
As the manager and leader of your sales team we know you’re good, now the question is, are you
good enough and willing to commit the effort necessary to help each member of your sales team
strengthen their operational, tactical and strategic selling skills and overall territory success?
Jim Pancero
© Copyright 11/2013 Jim Pancero, Inc.
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