Steps to Results Driven Sales for B2B Executives

Evaluate every candidate with a sales-specific assessment tool and confirm the results with a deliberate interview process designed specifically for hiring sales people. In our experience, this is the best way to separate the sales superstars from the sales imposters. Dave Kurlan has written extensively about the importance of a sales-specific assessment tool (read here and then here).

Using a tool like this is a good first step, but only if you fully leverage the information found on the assessment results by asking the right questions and probing the right areas in the interview process. Past success at another company or in another situation will not automatically translate to future results at your company.

The best thing about starting the sales hiring process is the tremendous energy and enthusiasm you have. The danger is, without guidance, you can squander this precious resource, leaving you high and dry, with months down the drain and nothing to show for it.

For more information on how we educate companies on how to use an important tool like this I will be holding an upcoming webtrack with more in-depth information on "Hiring a Sales Superstar." This program will consist of a one hour webinar, followed by 21 days of reinforcement through short e-mails. By following the crucial tips I have outlined and attending this webtrack, the speed with which your first success will come may completely surprise you. For more information on "How to Hire a Sales Superstar" please sign up for our upcoming webinar at: http://intelligentconversations.eventbrite.com/.

Be ruthlessly efficient when screening sales candidates. Many sales managers get bogged down looking at stacks of resumes trying to find the needle in the haystack. Eventually they get frustrated and simply pick one, pushing aside any prerequisites they had established before entering the hiring process.

Successful sales managers who consistently produce strong recruiting results over time have found ways to streamline their screening process. A 5-minute phone conversation, done correctly early in the screening process can tell you far more about a candidate than the many exaggerations and puffery found on most resumes.

For more information on how a well crafted phone screen can help your business I will be holding an upcoming webtrack with more in-depth information on "Hiring a Sales Superstar." This program will consist of a one hour webinar, followed by 21 days of reinforcement through short e-mails. By following the crucial tips I have outlined and attending this webtrack, the speed with which your first success will come may completely surprise you. For more information on "How to Hire a Sales Superstar" please sign up for our upcoming webinar at: http://intelligentconversations.eventbrite.com/

Crucial Step #1: Be very clear about what you want in a sales person. Think carefully about what they must be able to do to succeed.

-Who do they need to call on?
-How strong will the resistance be?
-How long is your sales cycle?
-Will they be working from your office or remote?
-Will they sell them and move on or develop long-term relationships?
-How are you going to pay them- Straight commission or mostly salary? Something in between?

The more clarity you have around the specific skills your sales superstar will need and the types of challenges they need to have successfully overcome in their immediate past, the better job you'll do when writing a killer ad to attract the best potential candidates.

In addition to the next two steps I will also be holding an upcoming webtrack with more in-depth information on "Hiring a Sales Superstar." This program will consist of a one hour webinar, followed by 21 days of reinforcement through short e-mails. By sure to follow the crucial tips I have outlined and attending this webtrack the speed with which your first success will come may completely surprise you. For more information on "How to Hire a Sales Superstar" please sign up for our upcoming webinar at http://intelligentconversations.eventbrite.com/.

Congratulations! You finally got your budget to hire a new sales person approved and you're ready to start recruiting a sales superstar. With apologies to Guy Kawasaki (http://blog.guykawasaki.com/), get ready for an "Oh shitake!" moment when you ask yourself:

1. How do I attract and identify the right sales candidates who can ramp up quickly and have an immediate revenue impact?
2. How long will this take and how can I manage the sales hiring process without neglecting the 23 other "number one priorities" I need to accomplish every day?
3. Is there really anyway to be sure I am separating the sales superstars from the sales imposters?

These are powerful questions just about every sales manager asks themselves when they decide it's time to add new talent to their sales team. Over the next two weeks I will be outlining three (3) crucial steps you can take to save yourself months of frustration and thousands of misspent dollars. Check back on Wednesday, September 8th for step one!

I was having a conversation with my colleague Tim Hagan this morning about the tendency for sales management to react (and sometimes overreact) too quickly. The consequences can be devastating to the sales team's motivation and the overall morale of the company. All the research shows that customers first make decisions on an emotional level and then rationalize their decision intellectually. So the last thing you want is a demoralized sales force with a bad outlook.

As we talked about a few specific coaching situations we're both in, I gave the example of playing racquetball. One of the mistakes beginning racquetball players make is playing too aggressive - they dart back and forth and try to smash the ball as hard as they can as soon as they can. More experienced players have learned the value of waiting for the ball to bounce. They don't have to run as far, they conserve energy, they change the pace of play, and when they pause to let the ball bounce off the back wall they have more time to plan where they want to place their next shot.

Your Vice President of Sales and Sales Managers have shots flying at them all day. They run from one crisis to the next trying to swat away problems, save deals, coach sales people to be better, and motivate the team. What would happen if they slowed down - just a little bit - to let the ball bounce before reacting to something? Would they be more effective? Could they avoid overreacting and demoralizing the team? What would happen to your sales productivity if your Sales Leaders took the time to thoughtfully plan their next shot instead of smashing it with all their might and then darting to their next meeting?

If you're on a calendar year your VP of Sales is probably in the initial research phase of preparing their budget for next year. How much will they put in for sales training? How much should they? What kind of training should you invest in? Is there anything you can do to make sure you maximize the impact of your training investment?

1. How much should we budget for sales training?

A good rule of thumb for a high-performing sales organization is to invest somewhere between 3-6% of your sales payroll on additional sales training and development. So for a 10-person sales team where each sales person is making $100k, that would be $3,000-$6,000 per person, or $30-$60k for the department. If your sales team is already operating at a high level, you may be able to scale that back. If you have neglected investing in sales training and development, you may need to increase this budget until your sales team consistently performs at a high level.

2. What kind of training should we invest in?

When you stop and actually look at how companies spend their training dollars (as we do in our sales force development consulting practice) a few trends emerge immediately.

* It seems most companies still use a "Feature/Benefit" sales model because what is often categorized as sales training is really just product training (if we drill in all those features, something will stick). Very little if any money is invested on developing sales people and giving them the skills to ask better questions and have intelligent conversations. Even less attention is given to sales managers who need to develop the tools and skills they need to become better coaches.
* There is often a bias toward "quick fix" seminars and one-day training sessions. High-impact one-day training doesn't work! It's like trying to take a sip of water from a fire hose, most of it runs off and dries up in a short time - and you get water up your nose!

The most effective training programs are delivered in a "blended learning" environment that combines live workshops that emphasize role play along with individual study that allows each sales person to focus on their particular weaknesses. No matter how the training is delivered, reinforcement and follow up coaching by the sales manager is critical. This type of reinforcement training provides opportunity for clarity and real world application. And that is when true change happens.

3. Is there anything we can do to make sure we maximize the impact of our training investment?

The best investment you can make is to evaluate your sales team. A good evaluation should provide insights into the "unanswerable questions" you've had about your sales organization:

* Who on the team is trainable?
* Do we have the right people in the right roles?
* How much training will they need and is it worth it?
* What impact will training have on improving my sales pipeline? How about our closing percentages? What about increasing margins?
* What type of return-on-training-investment should I expect for my current sales team?
* Are my sales managers doing everything they can to grow the business?
* What should my sales managers start doing? What should they stop doing?
* Who on my sales team can we save and will it be worth it?

Investing in a sales training program without being able to answer these questions would be like publishing your financials without getting an outside audit. Ask these questions when your Sales VP turns in their first draft budget you'll have a very productive conversation.

I've read, written, and rewritten thousands of job ads in my career. When clients ask for feedback on an ad, the number one place where I get the most resistance from clients is when it comes to including the salary in the job ad.

Let me paraphrase recent conversations with clients:

Client: Should you include the salary in your sales recruitment ad?

Ev: YES!

Client: Then my competition will know what I'm paying.

Ev: Your competition already knows. Competitors know competitors and people talk. Salespeople talk to other salespeople in the industry. Previous job seekers have told other job seekers. There are websites that give salary ranges for industry and markets. If competitors really want to know what you are paying your salespeople they can find out pretty easy. I've even had a manager that had no problems telling customers and prospects how much I made!

Client: Should I lie about the salary and put a high number in the ad?

Ev: No! Don't lie. You don't have to put every little nuance of the compensation package like all the various bonuses, incentives, and contests you do, but you should give a realistic number that the salesperson can hit if they do the work.

Client: If I put the salary in the ad I'll attract just those candidates that are looking for the money.

Ev: Depends on what the rest of the ad says. If you are paying a base of $100,000 and don't explain anything else about the job except cliches, you will get people that apply just for the money. If you qualify what they have to do to get that $100,000 (call on presidents, travel 40% of time, etc.), then you will discourage people that don't have the skills from applying.

Client: I don't talk about money with others so I'm not going to put it in.

Ev: I understand that some people are not inclined to talk about money because of where and how they were raised, or it hasn't been relevant to their job. Salespeople HAVE to talk about money with clients and prospects all the time. If YOU can't talk to them about money, how can you ask your salespeople to talk to their clients about money?

Client: Good salespeople don't care about money so much as opportunity and the challenge of closing the business.

Ev: Partially true. Opportunity needs to be there. The opportunity has to be in the form of two main things:

1. opportunity to make a ton more money than current/previous job

2. opportunity to advance into a sales manager role, or different role in the company that the salesperson covets.

There are some people that thrive on the challenge of selling a particular product/service in a particular market/industry, however all salespeople face the "challenge" of closing business so that is not a unique selling point unless the product or service you provide is so unique that the challenge of closing the business is an experience of its own. Selling old Formula One cars might be a good example. http://www.f1-sales.com/stock.htm

Stay tuned for Part Two of this conversation next week!

Dave Kurlan wrote another gem this week in his recent article "Sales Coaching is Like Baseball - How Do You Rate?" While Dave makes several great points, there's one I want to highlight that we see sales managers struggle with on a regular basis - the effective use of role play.

To be an effective sales coach your sales manager must be able to demonstrate the proper way to handle all of the sales situations their team encounters. If there's a tough competitor in your market working one of your weak spots or trying to reframe the conversation to their advantage, your sales people need to know the:

* Questions to ask,
* Statements to make,
* Phrases to use,
* Softening tactics that gently steer the conversation back on track, and
* Right tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language to do all of this.

The same thing applies to overcoming objections, handling price discussions, uncovering compelling reasons, qualifying the decision process or budget, and all of the other milestones they must reach over the course of an intelligent sales conversation.

So what are the key elements to effective role play? In addition to what Dave writes about we offer the following list - our Five Rules for Effective Role Play:

1) Sales Process Map; the first step sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised at how many sales organizations miss it. To be an effective sales coach who can demonstrate the right behaviors through on-the-spot role play, it's eminently helpful to have a well defined Sales Process Map outlining the key milestones and how to hit them over the course of the sales conversation.

2) Ditch the Map; while mapping out a general framework for your sales process is a great first step, understand that an actual sales conversation almost never happens as planned. A sales process map will give you the general direction to go and areas to cover, but you'll need to be agile enough to adjust and adapt once you are in a real sales conversation.

3) On-the-Spot Role Play; your sales managers may be uncomfortable doing this (at first), but nothing earns credibility and changes sales behavior faster than effective on-the-spot role play. Whether it happens in the middle of a sales meeting or during a one-on-one, going into role play "on-the-spot" to demonstrate the right sales behavior makes everyone step up their game.

4) Sales Person as Prospect; the toughest prospect you will ever meet is a sales person who has been beat up a lot by prospects over the past week. When they get an opportunity to "be the prospect" they get to amalgamate all of the objections, tough questions, and difficult behaviors they've experienced from prospects over the past few days. For a sales person this is extremely fun (and therapeutic). For a sales manager it provides great insight into the types of issues their team is encountering in the field (and it also gives them insight into how busy people are - if a sales person can't role play as the prospect effectively they're probably not in as many sales conversations as they're reporting).

5) Do It and Then Do It Some More; the easiest and most effective way to get better at sales is to get into more sales conversations. And while nothing can replace the experience gained during live sales calls, frequent role play between sales manager and sales person provides a great way to have those conversations in a constructive environment. The more your sales managers do this the better they'll get at it.

Have your sales managers follow these Five Rules for Effective Role Play and you will start to see your sales team having better conversations, with better prospects, selling larger opportunities at higher margins and creating stronger top line growth for your company - and isn't that what you want from your sales department?

I was in a conversation with a CEO last week asking questions about their sales organization, the critical sales ratios they monitor, how frequently they meet, what they accomplish during their sales meetings, turnover on their sales team, profit margins, their competitive landscape, and a host of other issues. As I asked these questions I could see the CEO was getting more and more frustrated.

Finally he just threw up his hands and said "Look, I don't track any of that stuff. I just watch the results they put up and until recently I didn't have to worry about it!"

Here's the mistake I made - by asking so many detailed questions I painted managing the sales organization as a complex, mysterious and difficult to understand process. It's not, but it does require top management attention and you can't manage it simply by looking at the results .

As CEO you don't have to track every last detail - leave that for your VP of Sales and your sales managers - but here are four key areas that provide a good place to start:

1. Sales Organization - do you have enough turnover? Will your sales managers fire someone for poor performance? Are they constantly recruiting and looking for better talent? How effective is your on-boarding process and are you actively working on ways to reduce the time from hire to revenue production?

2. Sales Management - are your sales managers doing everything they can to grow your business? Are they running effective sales meetings? Are they coaching effectively and developing the team? Do they demonstrate the right behaviors? Do they hold people accountable?

3. Sales Ratios - are there enough opportunities in your sales pipeline? Are opportunities moving through your sales pipeline at the right pace? Are your sales managers tracking the daily behaviors of their sales team? Are their sales forecasts real-world or wishful thinking?

4. Market Data - has each sales person identified their "top 5" (or whatever the right number is for your market) opportunities? Do they know which of their clients are on your competitor's "top 5" list and what are they doing to build deeper and broader relationships? What is your competition doing that may disrupt your plans? Have you identified new markets or opportunities to broaden the reach of your product or service? Who in your company is thinking about this and looking for ways to grow new markets?

If you're like most executives we meet you're probably not tracking all of these things and if you are you may not be tracking them with enough frequency. The question you have to ask yourself is what could be more important than growing your top line? Everything starts with a sale and if you focus your time and attention on these four areas you will start to see greater levels of accountability, increased activity, stronger sales performance, and ultimately increased revenue.

Taking the time to systematize even the most mundane, mindless tasks within your company can save you and your team time and your sanity. Take five minutes to write down a list of things you do on a daily basis then ask yourself: "Do we have a set way to do this?"

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1. Phone greeting; is everyone answering the phone with the same greeting? Does everyone take messages the same way? Do you have a system to assure the person gets the message? It seems like a simple task, however if it's not done effectively you risk losing business. Take the time to create a short greeting. Purchase a message book so your team is trained to look for the same type of paper every time they have a message to respond to.

2. Checking your voice mail; as my boss likes to joke: "What do I need to know how to do if you get hit by a bus tomorrow?" If I ever take a day off my team knows to simply go to my bookshelf, find the Systems Binder, and find step by step details on how to do even the smallest task such as answering voicemail. If small things like that get left behind, it's a lot more work to catch up when you return!

3. Reviewing and updating your systems binder; if you're going to take the time to create the binder, make sure you take the time to keep it up to date. My system for this is easy. Each system gets a date assigned at the top right hand side of the paper. Then, a date is scheduled within Outlook to "review system." Some systems only require being reviewed every six months; some need to be looked at every 90 days. It doesn't take the long to do, and the benefits are huge!

This week as you go about your day keep a piece of paper by you and write down all the tasks you do on a daily basis. After assembling the list it is easy to check off each activity as you create a system and add it to your Systems Binder. The organization may seem overwhelming in the beginning, but the time is well spent to save your energy later on. Stop by next week and I'll go over the importance or creating a position manual for each position in your company and how to assure your year reviews are as productive as possible.

If you are anything like me there is nothing more frustrating than disorganization. Being a firm believer in finding a set way to complete a task and sticking to that pattern every time, it can aggravate me when a coworker does not. As a business manager, administrative assistant, or whatever fancy title you have on your business card-it's your job to make sure that your company runs without any hiccups on a daily basis. However, you may ask yourself: "How do I make my boss and sales teams do anything?" The simple answer is systemization.

If you were to sit down and list all the areas of your business that need organization it can look like a daunting task. However, by taking on each subject separately you can easily have a stress free business organization within six (6) weeks. Over the next two months I will be outlining:

* Basic office organization-simplifying the simple,
* Position manuals and year reviews,
* Systematizing your team's travel,
* Developing a concise marketing system,
* What to do when you receive a stack of business cards, and
* The importance of a 90 day planning session.

Last article I gave seven tips you can do to make your cold calling more effective before you start your calls. Here are eight tips you can use while making your calls:

1. Stand Up: The tone of your voice conveys more about you than the words coming out of your mouth. By standing up and talking you energize yourself and sound better on the phone. There is some truth when people say "I think better on my feet." It also changes your perspective of your surroundings. Your brain gets more active taking in the subtle changes it is seeing.

2. Have Different Information Each Time You Call: I used to work at a company where the salespeople left the same message and had the same conversation over and over hundreds of times per week. Not only were they bored, but the number of calls returned went down. Why? Prospects knew why they were calling and found it more of an annoyance. They accepted appointments just so they could stop the calls. If you have a new idea, relevant to your customer, each time you call your customer will more readily take your call because they know you will have some good information for them that they can use and it establishes you as an expert in your field and a professional salesperson. It is a good compliment to be called a professional.

3. Don't Leave a Voicemail Every Time: This stops you from sounding too robotic and gives you a break from leaving the same message over and over, and relieves you the stress of trying to think of something new every time.

***I only suggest this if you are routed through a gatekeeper or automated switchboard to your contact. If you dial the direct number of your contact make sure you leave a valuable message. With caller ID they might be screening calls. If they see your name or company they might not pick up. If they know you are leaving interesting messages they are more likely to pick up or return your call.***

4. Try A Fun Game: Instead of calling your list at random. Make it a game. Call all companies starting with "A," or companies that end in "Y," or all of your contacts who are ladies or all of the contacts who are men. If you want to know about something I did, read this blog by Mike Carroll.

5. Don't Try To Be Perfect On Every Call: Be yourself. You won't have the perfect pitch and tone or wording all the time. No one is perfect. Don't try. Be yourself. Have fun. Learn from your mistakes. Try new ideas. If you screw up, SO WHAT! You have an immediate opportunity to do better on your next call.

6. Don't Use A Script: Scripts are guidelines. Put them into your own words. If you are worried you can't, see tip #12.

7. Smile: Place a mirror where you can see your face. As you talk smile at yourself often. This is an old radio broadcaster trick. Smiling helps inflection and tonality and you come across more friendly.

8. Research: Go to LinkedIN and see if the person you are trying to connect to has anything in common with you. That is an easy way to start a conversation. Spend a minute or two looking at the company website so you know what they do. DON'T GET BOGGED DOWN IN RESEARCH that you let it distract you from your calls.

What tips do you use for making cold calling easier. Comment or contact me and I'll put them all into a new article to share with you!

Ev

According to a recent study by SpencerStuart, the most common path executives take before becoming CEO is Operations. Finance was second. Sales and Marketing are the third and fourth most common roles, but there's significant gap between these "customer facing" functions and the "back room" functions that lead the way.

What impact does your historical role have on how you view the sales organization? Understanding and being aware of the biases your past may create is the first step to building a better relationship with your Vice President of Sales - the kind of relationship that will help you deliver the revenue results your investors expect!

1. Operations Background - View of Sales

-Focus on sales as a "process" - you love the sales process flow chart your VP of Sales created showing each potential decision point and feedback loop
-Tools and Infrastructure - since you view sales as "a process that can be optimized" you are willing to invest in CRM tools, databases, pipeline reports and other things that improve your sales infrastructure
-Systems View - while you like your VP of Sales, you tend to view individual sales people as "parts in a larger system" that can easily be replaced or upgraded (as a result you may have more sales hiring mistakes than most of your peers)

2. Finance Background - View of Sales

-Focus on "cost of sales" - you tend to focus on reducing the "cost of goods sold" line on your monthly profit and loss statement more than your peers do
- Profits come next - in addition to reducing COGS, you also tend to focus on increasing profit margins and ask your VP of Sales to drive the team toward selling higher-margin products or services
-Sales People and Recruiting are an expense - you tend to view sales people and the constant need to replace them as an expense to be managed rather than an investment to maximize. You will disagree with this at first. Remember that next time you are upset when signing the commission checks some people on your sales team earn

3. Marketing Background - View of Sales

-Build It & They'll Buy It - you tend to be pretty feature/benefit oriented and have a fundamental belief that if your product team builds the right stuff all your sales people need to do is collect orders
-Value Proposition - from your perspective, it's all about defining and communicating the right value proposition. If sales are down your first instinct is to work on this rather than develop your sales people or improve sales management
-Killer Demo/Presentation - your sales people are more familiar with PowerPoint than Excel. With your natural bias toward building stronger and stronger value propositions, your VP of sales has mastered the subtle art of rearranging bullet points and graphics

4. Sales Background - View of Sales

-Fear & Loathing - because you have such a detailed understanding of the challenges facing your sales team, you fear losing control and have to resist the urge to put on your "VP of Sales" cavalry hat and ride to their rescue
-Will Spend Money - in our experience, CEOs with a sales background tend to approve more generous compensation plans and will spend more on technology and perks for the sales team (the results their teams produce rarely correlate)
-Potential Blind Spot - a strength overextended can become your greatest weakness. Because you have such a detailed understanding of sales and the sales process, you tend to wait too long before asking for help

Are these observations a little harsh and too simplistic? Yes, that's probably fair criticism. Then again, there are elements of truth in each of these observations and the first step to improving yourself is to recognize and acknowledge your potential shortcomings. The question you need to ask is do you want to talk with someone who will "tell you like it is" rather than a sycophant who just tells you what you want to hear?

"Patience is a virtue, right? Too much patience is stupidity." Lou Piniella, Cubs manager, after shaking up the lineup of his run-challenged club.

We see it happen all the time - sales managers who are afraid to shake things up on their sales team who end up keeping mediocre performers when all signs indicate they should let them go. Yes, patience is a virtue. And yes, it's the sales manager's responsibility to make sure they do everything in their power to create an environment for sales people to succeed - from daily coaching, to joint sales calls, to frequent role play, to motivating, to investing in sales training, to listening to calls and debriefing, and supporting their sales team in every way possible.

But as Cubs manager Lou Piniella put it this past weekend, "%u2026too much patience is stupidity." When should your sales manager draw the line and make the difficult decision to let a sales person go? What criteria should they use leading up to that decision? How do you make sure your sales manager is doing everything they can to avoid the mistake of letting a potentially strong producer go?

1. Manage Daily Behaviors, not Results - we advise our clients to focus on the daily behaviors that lead to sales results, rather than the results themselves. This is especially important when a sales person is struggling. You can monitor this by looking at what your sales managers are measuring. Do they know the number of call attempts, referrals, or introductions each sales person generates every day/week/month? How many turn into conversations? How many conversations turn into face-to-face meetings? How many meetings turn into proposals? If your sales managers focus on the day-to-day activities that lead to success, the sales results should follow.

2. Three Strikes and You're Out - as your sales manager monitors specific activities, have them set clearly defined activity goals for the sales person in question. Since the activities monitored should be within the sales person's control and are measurable, set specific targets. The first time they miss a target (for the day, week or month, as appropriate), that's strike one. If they get to strike one, talk about what happened and coach them through whatever challenges or difficulties caused them to miss the target. If they get to strike two, the sales person gets a day off (unpaid) to get their head on straight and to think about whether or not they want to be in their position. If they reach strike three, it's time to let them go.

3. Recruit, recruit, recruit - we tell our clients that a decision to recruit is not a decision to hire. If you are constantly recruiting sales talent, you'll never be held hostage by mediocre performers because you'll have a strong pipeline of sales candidates available. It is extremely difficult to implement the "three strikes and you're out" rule if you don't have a recruiting system in place. Most sales managers we evaluate recruit on an "as-needed" basis only.

No matter how long you've run your company, chances are you've had sales managers hang on to a struggling sales person a little too long. Follow these three simple steps and you can make sure their patience doesn't breed mediocrity in your sales organization. Need help? That's what we do - just e-mail mike@intelligentconversations.com to schedule a briefing.

Our vision is to help sales people and sales teams reach their full potential through results-driven sales force development solutions and market development programs.

Sales Force Development is an integrated approach to organically and systematically grow sales, by improving the people, systems and strategies that impact sales. Market Development makes sales superstars even better by helping them focus on the right opportunities, at the right time, with enough information to start intelligent conversations.

When you're in the business of selling - and it doesn't matter what you're selling (products or services) - you can't concentrate on the consultation first. Many salespeople gear up for that first conversation, but the logical place to start is with market development.

Finding the right people to talk to - executives and decision makers who either have or will eventually have the problem you solve - is key to your b2b sales success. For many sales teams, hiring a third party to help them unearth these prospects is an approach which can shave time off of the learning curve and help everyone reach an optimal state of productivity.

You can't just rally the forces to have consultations with just anybody. Focus on the right people, at the right time, with enough information about their current situation to start an intelligent conversation. The prospect needs to be the executive who is seeking a solution for something you provide - and who is in the market to buy.

A lead generation strategy has to mean more than just asking, "Will they buy?" You have to enhance that instant sales gratification with details on the company, top executive profiles, and the possibility that the lead will provide an opportunity for cross-selling in the future.

It takes great skill to scout out a selling opportunity, and that means you have to learn to spot them for your own set of solutions within your niche - even when they're not obvious. This helps your client base recognize that your goal is to help them build their own success, and not just line your pockets with profits.

Lead generation tactics vary. Some do nothing more than buy a batch of rehashed prospects that have been used countless times before. A better way is to enlist the help of a source specializing in market research and analysis - someone who can pinpoint your target audience and practically hand-deliver them to your front door via a myriad of marketing services designed to draw the attention of your potential customers and clients.

After you hone in on a productive lead generation strategy, you'll begin setting appointments for the consultative selling process.

Consultative selling is when you meet with the prospect and emphasize how your products or services will provide a solution for their business needs.

It's not as simple as showcasing your product and letting them figure out its benefits in regards to their business. It's your job to already know how it can provide assistance - and then convey that to the client using your own expertise.

You want to put a strong emphasis on the fact that you get it - you understand what it is they're looking for. Too often, salespeople simple enter a meeting with a potential client and present something that doesn't even meet their needs, so you want to get detailed and specific.

Not only will this tip the scales in your favor in regards to your knowledge about your own product or service, but it will communicate to the customer that you put in effort to understand their business - a true boon to the consultative selling process.

The return on their investment (ROI) will be a big concern to any business considering an investment with your company. You have to have your number crunching completed before you walk into the office. Preparation is key to closing the deal.

Be primed to address their concern about expenses as well as how your company's solutions stack up to the competition. With the right leads and the correct insight on what to bring to the consultative selling process in terms of insight and confidence, you shouldn't have a problem moving to step 3 of your results driven sales strategy.

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