Monthly Archives: July 2013

How to choose a Business Coach

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Lets leave aside the question of when do you need a business coach and skip to: How do you choose the right one for you?

I often hear comments by people trying to sell their coaching services that only current superstars in any profession have the right or capacity to coach others to excellence.

Really?

What I think all good coaches need to have is not the ability to perform particular activities well themselves, but the ability to bring to consciousness your performance on those activities so that they can help you improve. But – changing human behavior is a difficult thing. Thus, the profession of coaching has moved into the business world as the bridge between classical training, i.e. giving people new  information about how to perform tasks and creating sustainable changes in behavior.

Coaching is about helping people move from ‘knowing’ to ‘doing’. That is a complex process.

A good coach – a coach that will give you the outcome of better performance – is one that is able to translate your current performance, which you may be unconscious of, into consciousness, then help you to improve from there. A good coach is someone who understands the psyche of the human being; how to guide people through change; how to support people through levels of insecurity and fear and doubt, all of which dominates the process of change and learning; who are able to guide you through that process, and bring to consciousness your abilities. Then they have a good long look at where you’re currently at, how much runway you have ahead of you (i.e. ability to change) and formulate a plan that has absolute clarity from your perspective about how to make changes in your current behaviors to create a performance improvement.

I often hear coaches selling their personal sales success as the key to being good sales coaches.  You know, currently, the best blah, blah, blah in the whole planet, or, the most squirms of any human ever blah, blah, blah.  Well congratulations on your personal success!  But often these people are successful, but can they coach someone else? They may have a great natural grasp of their topic and they may have been on a journey of growth, maybe they’ve received support or good training from somebody else and they have merged all of those things together into a system that works really, really well for themselves. Their intuitive knowledge, their education, the support they’ve received from people around them whether that was from an official coaching process or just from the warm and the encouraging words of their peers or their parents or sometimes even the insults and challenges that they’ve received, that they’ve been able to rise and prove them wrong.

But, as a coach, how do you recreate that process to another person?

How we motivate ourselves, how we change, how we responded to fear, how we deal with the uncertainty, these are the things that stand in the way of our success.  And what you want in a good coach is somebody who knows how to systematically guide you through your fear, uncertainty, confusion, boredom, irritation, etc.

You don’t need a coach who is good at the individual tasks but has no consciousness of how they got good at these things themselves.  A good coach is someone who is conscious of how success comes, and thus will be able to guide you through change.

I’ve recently saw this awful caption of “Is your Coach yesterday’s Hero?”  Meaning, have they been a great performer in the past but have long since lost their touch.  First of all, I find that kind of thinking offensive and secondly, it’s actually irrelevant whether the coach is yesterdays or today’s superstar in the performance of the actual activity.  It would be like saying that you can’t coach Olympic athletes unless you were yourself currently an Olympic athlete.  Unless you hold the world record in breaststroke, you cannot teach, or more to point, coach to excellence a current star in the swimming pool.

For more on training and improving your sales skills, check out our Emotions in Selling training blogs here

How To Episode 1: How To Recognise a Sales Person

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You need staff and you need to interview a pool of candidates and see which one of them can sell.

There is a myth that some people believe that they can recognize sales people as soon as they see them, as soon as they chat.  To some extent, that is true because during the chat, they will exhibit some of their selling abilities.  Certainly, they will exhibit their communication style but whether that style is the right one for selling or not is harder to tell, so being able to be a good communicator is a really small fraction of the equation for being able to sell.

Another myth is that, it’s their energy, the twinkle in their eye, the spring in their step, their motivation, their ambition that really counts, so people that really want to succeed, that are passionate about selling or the product, or some other aspect of their life, this energy will exude when they are selling.  This energy may indeed exude when they are selling but it isn’t going to help them sell.  Their energy levels is about how interested they are in selling all their product which is certainly helpful, but their ability to sell is what’s crucial.  There’s a huge chasm between being interested in something and then you are able to do it.

I have a great passion for quantum physics and a whole bunch of engineering topics but I’m never going to make an engineer because despite my passion and interest, I don’t have any of the relevant abilities.  So we have a sales test that identifies the 75 attributes which you can never see in an interview that allows people to sell.  It’s not a skill-based test because skills are something that people can develop, you can teach them, you can change them, and you make skills better.  what you need is that they have the core capacity on which to build those skills.  Find out if your candidates can sell before you interview them, before you get mesmerized by their passion and certainly do observe for yourself as many of those skills that they may possess, but remember the current skills can be topped up, that core capacity.  It’s either there or it isn’t.

Visit our Facebook page and leave a message for Maya, or call her on 0407 005 290. 

Next in the series: How to Cold Call

Spotting a Top Gun Listing Agent

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Spotting a top gun listing agent in a 40 minute interview just from their external attributes is impossible…

As a Sales Psychologist with 20 years experience I have found in my research of top guns that they come in all personality shapes and sizes. There is no obvious type. Some are ego maniacs and brash however, as of yet I haven’t met one that is revolting.

I have also found that the very best can be humble and mild mannered in their external persona and can have a very ‘soft’ style.

Back in 1995 I conducted extensive research with a large group of known guns (i.e. new business agents with certifiable great sales results over more than two years). Using Clinical Psychology tools these guns were tested on 500 different attributes that it’s possible for a person to possess. The analysis showed they had 75 of those attributes in common and a whole bunch more that weren’t in common.

My research showed that the more of these 75 attributes you have, the more of a purebred Hunter you will be i.e. if you possess over 80% of these attributes then you can be classified a Hunter. You also need over 70% to be a good account manager style rep.

Hunters: Can endure prospecting, think on their feet well, compulsively persistent.

Farmers: need to plan and organise themselves in advance of engaging the prospect to perform well and be confident.

So a Farmer who has prepared well before an interview can appear to be a better agent than the-shoot-from-the-hip, off-the-top-of-my-head’ style Hunter. This is what we call in Real Estate as being “good in the lounge room”. But Farmers cannot prospect. Alone, farmers don’t get into many lounge rooms and they don’t usually persist long enough to get the listing.

But how these required ‘selling’ attributes combine with all the other attributes these people possess varies, to give them all very different external personas. That’s why it’s so difficult to spot these people accurately during an interview. Plus in an interview you are seeing them in a specific sales call and not at a time when it’s possible to exhibit any Hunter-only capacity.

There is one characteristic style all the pure Hunters have and that is an Exocet missile attitude to achieving the goals they set for themselves. For them, goals set by anyone else don’t work as an internal guidance tool, so they miss these targets.

So knowing all these differences, what can you do?

How to build sales results

  1. Hire people who have enough of the required attributes to become listing agents. The only way to do this with confidence is to use the SIP recruitment system which incorporates a clinical psychometric to search specifically for these attributes. See www.salesinventoryprofile.com
  1. Now that you have them in the business…train them. I cannot emphasise this enough. Capacity is a necessary foundation for skill. Skills are developed over time from training and practice. Like babies learning to walk, their capacity is inherent but to realise this they need to observe others walking and copy (starting with copying very badly). A good listing agent needs to see and hear lots of good techniques and then try them for themselves. If you leave them to work it out alone or observe the under performers in their environment they will be like babies who watch people walking with only one leg. They will eventual walk with a limp.

Traditionally we have spent very little time or money training new staff in Real Estate partially because most Principals are themselves still selling so their time is very scarce but more because 90% of new recruits will fail and the money, or time, spent training will be wasted.

This need not be true if you hire people capable of hunting.

  1. Finally you need to manage or coach them over time to help them stay focused and energised. While hunters need to work alone, all humans are herd animals and perform better in groups over time. So a hunter is a very special blend of working best alone and needing to feel like they are being supported. The best way to do this is one on one with weekly coaching sessions. Again because of time constraints this can be difficult for business owners to provide, it can also be unwelcome by the staff if the Principal is a listing agent competing with their hunters. So if the business owner is still listing then you will need a Sales Manager or an independent Coach.

Interested in more sales training articles?

More on achieving Sales excellence | Read about how to change Sales Results in your Staff

Alternatively, to talk about getting your staff trained and coached, call Maya on 0407 005 290

 

Starting a Sales Career Part 1

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In this short interview, Maya Saric – Sales Psychologist and founder of Sales Inventory Profile – will be talking to Eliza Doueihi, a member of the Sales Tribe team. Eliza starting with Sales Tribe as a Business Development Manager, moving on from her career as a Business Analyst.  This interview looks at why selling – especially cold-calling – is so difficult, and the components of success in real estate.

Maya: Hello, welcome back. Today, we are talking to a sales person who has journeyed from watching from the sidelines to being her own personal superstar. Today, welcome, Eliza Doueihi, a member of the sales inventory profile team. Eliza you were in IT, tell us a bit about your pre-sales career.

Eliza: In my pre-sales career I was a business analyst role.

Maya: Yep. Sounds boring.

Eliza: Business specialist, basically. I’ve been in the company for quite a while and my ultimate passion was to get into sales. I love to talk to people and I really wanted to move to sales but my boss just love so much and he valued what I contributed to the business that he wouldn’t let me go. Really, it came down to that. it wasn’t though I wasn’t able to do it, it wasn’t that I couldn’t sell – because I’m sure if I got the right training, I could. It’s just that, he wouldn’t let me go. That was really frustrating. It’s where I wanted to be. then I got the opportunity to move into real estate and that’s when I started really building relationships and talking to people and helping them out, getting them to where they want to be.

Maya: Alright. So before you go into real estate, what was your perception, what did you reckon?

Eliza: Well, I thought it was crazy, and I thought this will be so good. I’ll be driving a Merc in 6 months time…and I have my home line paid off. My kids are going to be doing all of these extra things that they never dreamed of. I didn’t get that far but I’m getting there, the thing was, the challenge was the fact that I didn’t realize how much work was involved in building my profile within the community and building my sales, and building my pipeline – which is really critical to a successful sales person. It’s to keeping that pipeline of funnel filled.

Maya: Right. So real estate has to be the most popular sales job on the planet because it does look easy, doesn’t it?

Eliza: Absolutely. [Chuckles]

Maya: Those beautiful people wearing lovely business suits, standing at the front door greeting – that part is easy.

Eliza: Not in the cold winter morning, Maya! Have you ever done that? There’s frost on the grass, 8 o’clock in the morning. It’s not pleasant. Putting sign boards, it’s not pleasant. And I tell you that. [Chuckles]

Maya: Eliza is an Australian who had a small voyage into New Zealand land, but there are natural hazards as well. But, back to things, that part where you see them in the house and you first meet them is easy.

Eliza: Yes.

Maya: But what is the hard bit? Knowing, as the failure rate is astronomical.

Eliza: Okay, the harder bit is when you’re got that list of contacts that you’ve taken from an open house and qualifying them and saying whether they’re going to be buyers or they’re actually sellers having a bit of sticky beak. So it’s taking that list and work again basically. The other harder bit is the actual building up of your client base, so actually cold calling. Building relationships.

Maya: That has to be a dirty word, cold calling. Back to the ice and snow of New Zealand. Why is cold calling so difficult?

Eliza: You can imagine you’re picking up the phone and you’re talking to someone you don’t know what they look like, you don’t know what their situation is and you want them to trust that you know what you’re talking about, and that you’re there to will help them out.

Maya: They’ve never met you before and you’re probably ringing in the middle of dinner.

Eliza: Yes. That too. That too.

Maya: How many people survive that in the real estate world?

Eliza: Not that many. I’d say 5% to 10% of people can really prospect and cold call.

Maya: 5% of the population can cold call which is to pick up the list from the phone book or get on the street and knock. A small percentage can warm call, which is the ringing the people that came to see the house on the weekend. What’s the next component of success in real estate?

Eliza: The fact that you close the same I guess would be the next one. You’ve got a buyer there and they’re still trying to decide what they’re going to do and it’s just working out how you’re going to get them to that next level. That’s another challenge on its own. Working at negotiating price that’s going to suit both parties. It’s just basically…a sales person rings 2 people like in real estate, you’re bringing 2 people together. So you’re bringing a buyer and a vendor and working out, finding a common ground. That’s really what an agent does from a selling perspective.

Enjoyed this video? Watch Part 2 here. Remember to ‘like’ us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more videos! 

Starting a Sales Career Part 2

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Continuing on from part 1 this short interview Maya and Eliza talk about using SIP – the Sales Inventory Profile – to recruit people who can really sell, and why this is.

Maya: So Eliza, you’ve journeyed from not selling to selling, you’ve entered in an industry that you didn’t have any significant background in…what would you recommend to other people who are thinking of the same thing?

Eliza: I would highly recommend you find out if you can cold call, first and foremost. Because if you can cold call, then you are more than half right there. So, that’s the first thing I will recommend because if you can’t there’s plenty of other sales positions where you don’t need to make cold calls, whether it’s real estate or in other industries. There are jobs out there that you can still sell without that cold call but if you want to move into real estate particularly as a listing agent, you need to know if you can.

Maya: And how do you find out?

Eliza: You have to use SIP. That’s the only way you that you can find out if you can cold call. It’s the only accurate measuring tool that can tell you that.

Maya: SIP is a profiling system that allows you to see if you have the inherent attributes to sell even if you’ve never sold before like Eliza and allows you to identify whether you should be in a new business cold calling environment or more in the account management, or in retail which is sort of half way. What’s your recommendation to businesses looking for sales staff?

Eliza: My recommendation to businesses is, cold calling is critical to business growth. For you to have a staff that can’t cold call it means that you won’t be growing. You need to find out if the people that you’re recruiting can cold call and the best way to do that is to use SIP.

Maya: What would you say to people…I’ve often spoken to business owners who say, well I don’t cold call, so how can I possibly make them do it?

Eliza: I would say to business owners that say that, you’ve had the experience; you’ve been in the industry for a long time so you won’t need to cold call. You’ve already built the relationships. When someone comes in new into the industry, they need to cold call to build relationships. They need to fill that funnel, and it’s the only way to do it. If they can’t cold call, don’t take them on.

Maya: Right. So it is as simple as that. If they can’t cold call, don’t take them on. You as the business owner might have 5,10, 20 years experience and a reputation and a client base. They have a telephone. They need to be able to pick it up.

Eliza: I also remind them when they say that to me, to cast their mind back to when they first started. I’m almost 100% certain they would cold call to build that client base in their area, and to build the reputation they now have.

Maya: Right but like with all things that are painful and difficult in our lives, they’ve wiped it from their memories, right?

Eliza: That’s right. They’ve forgotten. They absolutely have forgotten.

Maya: There are no shortcuts.

Eliza: Right.

Maya: If you’re in a cold calling environment, it’s the phone and real estate is a cold calling environment to get the listing.

Eliza: Yes.

Maya: Eliza, thank you for your time.

Eliza: Thank you, Maya.

Enjoyed the interview? Check out our latest How-To Series. Happy watching!

Sales Myths Episode 5: Anybody can sell

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Sales Myths: There’s no skill required to sell. Anybody can do it.

Indeed, there are lots of people who have tried to sell and failed miserably. The mutli-level sales organizations of the world would testimony to that. They have thousands of members but less than 1% of those are generating their revenue. It’s a very small percentage of the population. It’s less than 5% if you need to proactively make phone calls and initiate sales conversations.

Find out if you are one of those 5% before you waste your life and oodles of your money learning to sell when it just isn’t you.

Liked our series? Watch more videos: Starting a sales career

Sales Myths Episode 4: Selling is not a real career

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Selling is not a real career. Indeed, many people do get into it by accident. But, 90% of managing directors having during their career been sales people. Sometimes for a long period of time, sometimes for 4 or 5 years, sometimes for 10 or 15. You cannot lead an organization without understanding how to generate revenue.

Selling is a skill that you can perfect and hone and develop if you have the real capacity. SIP — Sales Inventory Profile will identify that for you. If you’ve got it. You can make it. If you’ve got those attributes, you can then craft a really spectacular long-term sales career and perhaps management career.

Watch Part 5 here.