Sales Simulations Are a Blue Ribbon Training Method

Over the last decade we have used sales simulation with a significant number of B2B companies across a wide variety of industries. The programs have consistently received extremely high evaluations. The programs get high marks from both the participants and from senior sales management.

Because a significant amount of money is spent on sales training each year and getting it right is increasingly important, we thought a review of sales simulations would be useful. Let's take a look at what it takes to design an effective one and then explore some of the potential payoffs.

Sales Simulations - What does it take to design a good one? First, it is important to establish some background. When we discuss sales simulations we are talking about classroom programs versus computer simulations. The programs are either one or two days in length. In order to design a good one, the following considerations are important:

• Design. The simulation must be custom-designed for your sales reps and the specific sales challenges they face. Off-the-shelf simulations with a few customized examples will not carry the day when a sales team is engaged in a complex B2B sale.


• Learning Environment. The classroom experience must be highly interactive and engaging. This is best accomplished by reducing the lecture time to zero and maximizing practice and feedback.


• Instruction. A faculty rather than a single trainer should instruct the sales simulation. The best combination is a senior instructor plus experienced sales managers who can play the buyer roles, introduce best practices, and provide expert feedback.


• Sales Simulations - What are some of the potential payoffs? Given that sales simulations are a high-impact design and assuming they are custom-developed for each client, the potential payoffs and associated priorities can be fine-tuned for each implementation. A short list is:


• Skill Development. The major outcome of every training program is skill development. In the sales simulations used with our clients, two skill areas have been emphasized - account strategy and call execution. In complex B2B sales the ability to formulate and modify an effective account strategy and the ability to plan and execute sales calls are indeed the core skills for success.


• Special Sales Challenges. In some companies the sales team is faced with specific challenges that the sales simulation can be customized to address. Examples would include: selling to senior management, positioning a new product, or moving from selling an individual product to selling an integrated solution.


• Institutional Support Validation. In B2B sales everyone needs to come to the party - the sales team requires, for example, help from groups such as technical support and marketing. By observing the strategy planning and the sales calls in the sales simulations, a judgment can be made as to whether the existing support is on target. Questions can be answered like: Do the sales reps need more and better product literature? Do they have a repertoire of success stories? and Is there a shared set of messages around company history and capability?


• Team Building. In a sales simulation just completed for a major company in the oil and gas industry, the company was faced with the need to have a higher degree of coordination and teamwork between different sales groups within the company. To address this need, the participants were divided into teams comprised of members of the various groups. During the two-day sales simulation each team had to work together develop a strategy and make sales calls to leverage their combined capabilities to win the business.


• Training Needs Assessment. Because the faculty is comprised of sales managers and the participants spend all their time strategizing and making sales calls, the sales simulation provides an excellent opportunity to determine what additional training makes sense for the sales team. As an aside this is a quicker, less expensive, and more accurate approach for doing needs assessment than the classic survey method. It should be pointed out that whereas the sales simulation can be used to do a team level assessment; it is inappropriate to use it to assess individual sales reps. This of course would be true for any type of training.


• Coaching. Sales manager coaching is a key ingredient of any long-term effort to develop a sales team. Because the sales simulations use front-line managers as faculty and they are responsible for coaching both strategy and sales calls, simulations are an excellent opportunity for the sales managers to perfect their coaching skills.

Tips for Recruiting and Training Pharmaceutical Representatives

Is Biopharma Missing the Mark on Recruiting and Training Sales Representatives?

In 2011 81% of physicians surveyed said they wanted Higher Quality Sales Representatives. Higher Quality means sales representatives who were better educated and trained, more experienced and consultative and competent when discussing clinical studies. This issue will focus on two things you can do to improve the perception doctors have of pharmaceutical and medical sales representatives, Recruiting and Training.

Recruiting
Over the past decade biopharma has been focused on recruitment of new sales representatives with the objective of winning the "share of voice" or "arms" race. Many people believe we have sacrificed quality for quantity. Years ago we used to hire nurses, pharmacists and nutritionists as sales representatives who had extensive clinical backgrounds.

Now that the "Arms" race is over, it is time to begin to hire representatives with more clinical expertise. There are a lot of reps with prior pharma experience to choose from now so make sure you determine during the interview if the candidate possesses a knowledge of understanding and presenting clinical data and discussing evidence based medicine.

A good way to do this is to ask the candidate to speak extensively on their previous product and look for depth of disease state knowledge. Determine if they understand treatments other than their own and if they can discuss clinical data.

Training
While the biopharma industry is known for rigorous training, our current methods are lacking. Physicians are willing and eager to see representatives who provide value by expanding their focus beyond product to include disease state knowledge and clinical research.

It can be as simple as understanding clinical problems your products can solve and discovering which problems the doctor is experiencing. The percent of doctors wanting more discussion of clinical studies has risen from 80% in 2005 to 89% in 2011.

This leads us to believe that the industry has not improved on this measurement, rather we are getting worse. I suggest a return to the basics of presenting clinical studies the way they are set up in the study abstract. Each study abstract is organized according to the SOAP communication format.

Biopharma may be missing the mark on recruiting and training sales representatives who are competent at discussing clinical studies and evidenced based medicine, but this can be reversed by improving the way we recruit and train new sales professionals we hire into this industry. It is up to us to give doctors what they want and need in industry representatives.

Selling Skills: The AIDA Sales Model

The AIDA model is a method of selling that is commonly used to sell low cost, unsophisticated products, or to sell to prospects who don't give you much time to pitch. AIDA is an acronym and stands for the following four steps in the model:

1. Attention
2. Interest
3. Desire
4. Action

The first step in the AIDA model is to grab the prospects attention. If you are involved in door-to-door selling, or if your new prospects will only give you a few minutes (sometimes less) of their time, you must be able to quickly grab their attention so that they will allow you to move on to the next step of the model.

Here's something to think about: it only takes a few seconds for passers-by to walk by a store window display, and if the display doesn't grab their attention in that short space of time, they will walk by and not look back. If, on the other hand, the window display grabs their attention, they will probably take the time to come in the store which will give you more time to discuss or demonstrate your product, which could lead to making a sale.

It is during the time that you have to grab the attention of the prospect that they will decide whether they will continue listening to you, or not give you any further time. These few minutes are crucial, and the way to implement it effectively is to use creativity. Think carefully and creatively of the first words that you utter to your prospect. You might ask a good question, or give some startling facts or figures that relate to the product or service that you sell. If you must rely on a window display to grab the attention of a prospect, be sure to use creativity in dressing the window. The key is to think creatively of how you can successfully grab the attention of your prospect!

Once you have grabbed the interest of the prospect you can move onto the second step of the AIDA model, and that is to keep their interest. Do this by finding out their needs. Ask questions and then take the time to listen and understand exactly what the prospect needs. The prospect wants to be listened to! As the salesperson, it is your responsibility to then meet the needs, which could mean adapting your product or service to satisfy those needs.

"D" is for "desire". This is the third step in the AIDA model. Grabbing the attention and arousing the interest of the prospect is not enough to make the sale. People might be interested in your product, but may not have a desire to act. The prospect must develop a desire for your product if they are to purchase it, and you must help them along. You can create a sense of desire for your product or service in a number of ways. Here are four of them:

- Focus on the benefits of the product that you are selling. Emphasize how the benefits will positively affect the prospect if they were to own it.

- Instill a sense of urgency for the product by perhaps emphasizing limited availability. A sense of urgency tends to create desire in the product.

- Give value to your product or service

- Emphasize the fact that others have bought the product and are happy with it. Use testimonials to support your claims.

Once you are convinced that the prospect has a desire for your product, confidently and quickly move onto the final fourth step of the AIDA model: Action.

After you have successfully taken the prospect through the first three steps of the AIDA selling model, they need to then be led to take action and purchase the product. There should be no fear or hesitation in asking for the sale. Even before the prospect has confirmed the purchase, ask confidently and expectantly: "How many shall I pack?", "Would you like the green one or the blue one?", "Will it be cash or credit?", "When would you like us to delivery it?" By asking these types of questions you are helping the prospect take the decision to buy the product. Experience suggests that most prospects appreciate these types of questions because they help them to take a decision; it gives them that little extra push that they seem to want!

The Importance of Pinging the URL to Your Blog or Website

Many people know the basic of internet marketing, but there are some internet tools that are available for people to use that they are not aware of. I was speaking to an associate of mine who was having trouble with traffic to his blog. When I asked if he pinged his URL, there was a brief silence and then posed the questions "What is ping and why would I use it?"

What is pinging?>

Pinging is a general term where a server will distribute a new URL to hundreds of search engine websites. These websites often do not automatically update when new pages on websites or new updates on blogs post, so it basically helps these sites recognize that there is new content.

How to Ping

There are a variety of different websites that you can use to ping all of your links for free. Among the top ones that I use are Ping-O-Matic, Pingler, and PingMyURL. BulkPing is my favorite. It is an amazing server that allows you to ping as many websites as you would like all at the same time either by copying and pasting the URLs or uploading a word document where the server will automatically seek out the URLs that are located in the document.

I especially like this tool because it makes it simple to ping my URLs all at the same time in the same place and it will confirm each of the URL's that are pinged and how many websites they were sent to! This will increase the random traffic to your website by linking keywords to whatever the content of your website or blog is by bringing it up more often to the view of the public that are simply searching for new topics to learn about.

When you ping your websites, I always recommend to use the specific page URLs, this way the person browsing the website will not have to click around and guess which page might be useful in their search..

Be wary of your content

Remember, when you are building your websites or blogs, search engines can be a little smarter than they appear. If all you are posting are links, then Google or Yahoo might get suspicious and may flag your website as spam-filled or unreliable. I always recommend to write your own content this way there is a lesser chance of plagiarism. Some people like to outsource their writing to someone who will write for a fee. That is all completely up to you!

The Most Effective Uses of E-Learning: Part 1

Sales and Customer Service go hand in hand. A successful business cannot have one without the other. While these two departments serve somewhat different function, their primary objective should be the same, provide solutions for customers. With that objective in mind sales and customer service have similar training needs as well that can be served by expertly crafted e-learning solutions.

E-learning is an excellent tool to provide training solutions for sales and customer service teams because of its accessibility, consistency and versatility.

Sales and Customer Service staff are the front line for your business, their job is to provide the best possible experience for your customers. Training them is vitally important, part of its success is its accessibility I look at accessibility two ways. The first is simply how it is accessed by the user. This is an area where the delivery on-demand online training makes sense. Accessible 24/7 on the terms of the individual. The second way I look at accessibility in the design methodology. If you require your team to sit in front of a computer for hours reading through text on a screen just to get through a training it is not only ineffective, but lacks accessibility. We are firm believers in short tactical training focused around a specific business objective. 15 minutes or less, something that can be taken on a coffee break. It is more user-friendly and accessible!

Consistency is another key when providing training to sales and customer service members of your team. E-learning can be a tool to help integrate your employees into your company culture, this is especially important for those groups on the front line with your customers. People will go to a McDonald's anywhere in the world, is it because it is the best food available? Hardly, but they know they will get a consistent experience. Your customers expect a certain experience when they interface with your company, using e-learning as a tool for ongoing training for sales and service reps is sure-fire way to make sure the message is always consistent with your brand and company culture.

E-learning is extremely versatile when strategically developed around your business and it can offer some excellent residual benefits. One of the best residual uses of online training is the ability to re-purpose training content for use as a job aid. We all have things that we use everyday to help us do our job. For sales and service reps it may be as simple as a cheat sheet with product specs they can call up quickly when speaking with a customer. Many of the assets built for your online training can be reused to create quick, interactive and very visual job aids for employees. This helps to create more confident interactions with customers and more engaged sales and service reps. As mobile technology continues to evolve these job aid applications become more a more viable with accessibility across mobile platforms. The Commitment to E-learning is an investment in time and money, its versatility as a job aid will help generate a greater return.

Sales and Customer Service Reps are on the front line with your customers everyday. They must have the proper tools to create a first class experience for your customers with every interaction. Providing training through an E-learning platform will help create an accessible, consistent and versatile training experience with a significant ROI for your business.

Unique Uses of Salesforce Consulting

Salesforce consulting is a common practice among most businesses now. This is because the people in the sales department of any business are probably the most important employees. The reason for this is the fact that these people deal with the customers of the business directly. Since keeping customers happy is what guarantees success, the demand for professional consultants is now very high.

Most people assume that they need salesforce consulting only if they need to train their employees regarding customer relations. This, however, is not true. While you may not know it, CRM encompasses a lot more than simply knowing how to talk to customers. There are a number of unique uses salesforce consulting can provide. Here are some of these.

For one, a great use is the guidance and coordination salesforce consulting provides. For example, you may have a number of employees who are great at talking to customers. However, all of these people may have their own preferences while doing their job. CRM advisers will eliminate this problem by providing the same training solutions. All your employees will follow the same guiding force and will, therefore, be true representatives of the business.

Secondly, salesforce consulting can teach you a lot about modern methods. For example, even if your employees are efficient, you may be lagging behind in using the latest techniques and applications for CRM. A professional adviser will educate you about new applications that will not only improve your efficiency but will also save your time. You will, therefore, stay updated with modern technology and will effectively use it to manage your relationship with your customers.

CRM is one of the areas that take up a lot of business costs. However, you need to realize that you must do your best to reduce these. If the costs of your business are too high, salesforce consulting can help you in lowering them. This is because these experts will tell you about methods that will not only be effective but also cheap. Reduction of business costs obviously means that you will earn higher profits. This means that obtaining these services will increase your profits not only by pleasing your customers but also by directly reducing your costs!

Therefore, if you are one of the people who do not believe that consultants are useful, think again. There are several unique uses and benefits these professionals can provide for your business!

A Lesson On The Hated Sales Guy

Let's pretend for a second you're in the market for a new car. So you think to yourself; I have to go to a dealership and get pressured into buying something I don't want or can't afford by some pushy salesman. Or better yet you book an appointment with an Insurance Agent and think to yourself there is no way this guy is going to sell me anything "I Will Not Lose the War and Buy From This Stranger." The question I used to ask myself when I first started in sales is why? Why do so many people think negatively about sales people?

I have to tell you about a True Story about what my biggest lesson in sales was. Remember this is a True Story.

I remember when I first got into sales I was working for a MLM company which provided cell phone coverage in the early part of 2003. In those days you were told to show all your family and friends about the company to build your base. Anyhow, when I approached my Grandma with the plan that my up line told me to show; she yelled at me, told me I was making a bad decision, It's a scam and sales is too hard. So I paid her little mind as I pursued a living with MLM. Now to be honest I was not dominating at the company, but I was doing well enough to have nice clothes and afford a car with the income I was receiving.

So one day I signed up this young lady in the company. She seemed like a real smart woman, but little did I know I was in for a surprise. One day while prospecting I got into a bad car accident and I was in the hospital. Under the guidance of my grandma I decided that I need to find something that I really want to do, because this can all come to an end unexpectedly. So I followed my grandma's advice and quit the MLM job. I go back to school and take a regular job to help with bills. About six months go by and I run into one of the guys who was in my up line and he tells me the girl I hired was doing extremely well, I mean extremely well. They even had luxury car keys to show as proof of how well the group was doing as a whole. I paid no attention to it and just focused on school.

About another two weeks go by and my Grandma gives me a call and says: "The craziest thing just happened to me I was on an airplane coming back from Chicago and I was sitting by a young lady who is making a lot of money at her job. I went to write down your name as we were leaving the plane so you could get a job with her and the young lady tells me this." "Ma'am Your grandson's name is on all the checks the company sends me. He actually hired me."

WOW! Pretty crazy huh? Remember this is a true story.

Now at the time I was so bitter and angry, but that got me nowhere. I want that to be a lesson to anyone who reads this.

I know this sounds cliché, but Never Give Up!

You never know how close you are to having that nice car, clothes, free time with family, or vacations regularly. At the age of 19 I almost had a taste of financial success, but because of me quitting I have to chalk it up to being a learning experience. Don't waste your time having a moment like this one. Be consistent with your persistency!

I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Josh Billings.

"Consider the postage stamp; its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing until it gets there."

I Hope you learned something from my story and put it to use in pursuit of a career in sales.

Best Of Luck!