Should I hire a coach? I mean, I have been in business for a long time and I do go to a lot of seminars. I feel like of I can learn one thing each time I go. That’s good, right?” my ridiculously fit client, Darlene, asked me. So, to help her understand if she should hire a coach or not, I tried to help her through what she does. I answered: “Darlene, I don’t know if you should hire a coach, but let me ask you a couple of questions. I know you work out, we’ve talked about that before. And I know you go to the gym.” “Yes, of course,” she said. “Do you have a coach?” I asked. “Well, yes, I have had one for a couple of years.” “OK, so why do you have a coach? You know how to work out.” She told me that the coach taught her exactly how to do things the right way on each piece of equipment. She also kept her accountable. She was with her every step of the way and pushed her when she got tired and didn’t want to go any further. So I said: “Well, let me ask you something, Darlene: Say you hired a coach for one day, you were new to working out and you went to the gym with this coach. The coach walked you around to each piece of equipment, showed you exactly how to use the equipment, told you how many repetitions you should do on each piece of equipment and how to use it for the best result – and then you never hired that coach again. How long you think it would take you to achieve what you have now achieved?” She laughed and said: “OK, I get it.” As we had this discussion and laid it out, she began to understand the reason you need a coach in other parts of your life, whether it’s business or, more specifically, sales. People often tell me they are a people person and it’s all about relationships, so with their personality alone, that will work. Good luck. So, what are the things that you gain from a coach? No. 1, it’s setting up the right activities that you should be doing on a regular – daily, weekly, monthly – basis, whether it’s a business coach, a sales coach or a fitness coach. They set up the right activities for you. No. 2, they set you up with accountability, where they work you through these activities or you need to report back that you’ve done them and discuss how. No. 3, a coach keeps you doing it properly by constantly reinforcing what you’re doing, making slight changes so you do it right, and knowing when and how to bring you to the next level for maximum results. There are an awful lot of reasons why each person decides to hire a coach. But I find it interesting when I talk to people in sales who say: “Well, I know it’s a good idea to get a coach at the beginning. But I’ve been in sales for a lot of years and I don’t need a coach. I know how to do it.” My answer to those people is: “Who’s the best golfer in the world?” and Tiger Woods is what they always answer. I say: “OK, Tiger Woods, the best in the world – in the world of golf – has five coaches. He has a swing coach. He has a pitching coach. He has a putting coach. He has a fitness coach. He has lots of different coaches. So if you can tell me that you’re better at your business than Tiger Woods is at golf, then you’re right. You don’t need a coach.” Until you can say that, sign up. Greta Schulz is a sales consultant for businesses and entrepreneurs. For more sales training tips and tools, or to ask her a question, go to www.schulzbusiness.com or email greta@schulzbusiness.com. Your  Click here to share this post.

   We all know referrals are your best source for building business. There is nothing more effective than getting a referral from someone you know on a product or service that you’re interested in purchasing. So, even though most business people know this, why don’t we get more referrals? Well, there are two reasons: First, we don’t ask. Second, we don’t ask properly. So I want to talk about asking for referrals properly, how important it is to ask by sharing a story. We all have stories that we’ve shared about something we’ve done, over and above the norm, that our clients truly appreciated. Telling a story is the best way for somebody to remember what you do and share it with others when recommending you. I’m going to give you an example of something that happened to me: About five years ago, I wanted to get Lasik surgery, so my husband got me a gift certificate to a surgeon for Christmas. I went in to speak to Dr. Salinger. We sat down and, after extensive examination, he said: “Greta, you’re a very good candidate for Lasik surgery. The only problem is you have a thinning cornea because you’ve been wearing your contacts for so long, and probably abusing the length of time you are to wear them. You certainly will do well with the surgery, but you will take a little bit longer than others to heal. You will have some pain while the scarring heals.” That immediately scared me, because I am one of those people who hates anything even close to pain. But I did get the surgery done. When it was finished, he sat me up and said: “OK, here’s your pain medication. When it starts hurting, I want you to take this.” On our way home, I read the information on the medication. It said to take it every four hours for pain. So, that’s what I did. About 24 hours later, my eyes really started to hurt. I started to feel an intense amount of pain, so I called Dr. Salinger and told him it felt like someone was stabbing my eyes. He said: “Greta, take your pain medication. That’s what it’s for.” I told him I had no more left. He replied: “No problem, I’ll call it in for you right away.” A couple minutes later, the doctor called back: “Because this medicine is considered a narcotic, I can’t call it in.” I said: “What am I going to do?” He said: “Greta, it’s almost lunchtime. Don’t worry about it. I will drive up to your drugstore, hand fill out the prescription and hand it in. Have your husband go there in about a half an hour to pick up your medication.” Well, he absolutely saved my day. What’s the moral of the story? How often does a doctor leave his office and drive to the next town to drop off a prescription? I think never. Now, I’ve told that story several times. The reason I share it with you is to let you understand that people remember stories better than a recommendation. When I share that story, especially when I’m doing a workshop or a seminar, people will come over to me afterward and ask who my doctor is. I know he’s had at least two or three new patients just from me telling that story. So, what does that mean to you? It means that the two reasons you don’t get more referrals is that you don’t ask and you don’t ask properly. Asking properly means you have to think about something specific you’ve done for a client. Think about what you did over and above to help them. Make sure that you describe, in specific detail, what their issue was and what you or somebody in your organization did to help with it. That’s what people are going to remember and share. And that’s what’s going to get you referrals. So, what have you done for customers lately, and who have you shared that with? Greta Schulz is a sales consultant for businesses and entrepreneurs. For more sales training tips and tools, or to ask her a question, go to www.schulzbusiness.com or email greta@schulzbusiness.com. Click here to share this post.

       How do you know if that sales candidate you or your sales manager fell in love with is really the superstar you hope they are?  Before you pin your hopes on your managers’ ability to screen, recruit, interview and hire…you should know how pre-employment testing can raise your success rate in hiring new salespeople.   The keys to pre-employment testing is to make sure you’re testing for the right things.   Example:  Do you want to hire salespeople who know how to sell?  Or do you want to hire people who will sell?  Understanding the difference can make or break your career as an executive.  The right test will give you an accurate, honest assessment about your candidate and list them into the following four categories:  
 # 1. Can Sell and Will Sell:  Know what to do and consistently execute in selling situations.  Hire and train these and you’ll never need to worry about hitting budget.  
 #2. Can Sell but Won’t Sell: This is the most dangerous person to have on your team.  They know what do in selling situations but don’t consistently execute.  We keep giving them more time because “they’re just so good”. If you’ve got these on your team, find out quick if they’re fixable.  If not, replace them.  
#3. Cannot Sell But Will Sell: This person is the one that may pleasantly surprises you.  They don’t look or act like they could sell their way out of a paper bag, but they sell anyway.  Hire these, provide the right type of on-going training and you can guarantee superstar performance.  
 #4.  Cannot and Won’t Sell: Hopefully you don’t have any of these.   They’re easiest to spot and you should deal with them quickly and decisively.   What’s the right type of test?  There are so many sales pre-employment tests which fall into four types.  Here are the characteristics and limitations of each.  
Personality Tests:  Determines personality type and stability.  Cannot accurately predict whether or not people can or will sell.  It also brings up old beliefs that an outgoing personality, a real “people person” will be a good salesperson. After doing this for years, that is not a predictor of strong sale ability at all.   Benchmark Tests: These are an analysis of your “best salesperson(s) and taking the “characteristics of this person to try to hire in their image. In my opinion it is the combination of each person that makes them successful or not and to try to mirror that is setting up for failure.  
Sales Aptitude Tests:  Assess what people know about selling.  They won’t necessarily tell you whether or not someone will execute is a selling situation.  There’s a huge gap between knowing and doing.  
 Internal beliefs Test:  Measures strengths and hidden weaknesses that more accurately predicts whether or not someone will sell.   Measures guts, goals, selling system effectiveness, willingness to prospect, and their willingness to do whatever it takes even if it’s uncomfortable.   If you want to know how someone will fit in your company’s culture or how to manage them, use a behavioral test.  If you want to predict future sales performance, use an Internal belief test.    When combined with a strong recruiting process, you can virtually eliminate bad sales force hires.  Hold your managers accountable for their hiring mistakes. Sales training should come only when you have hired the right people.  
Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton knew how to hold his managers accountable for their hiring recommendations.  When his executives hired a candidate, Walton asked each to write a page outlining the candidate’s strengths and why they were hiring the candidate.  In the event that employee ever needed to be fired, Walton required the manager to write a page explaining why.  Then the manager had to travel to see Walton to personally explain the differences in the two memos.  After one of these sessions, few managers repeated a hiring mistake.
 There is nothing more important than hiring the right people. It should be an ongoing process. When you have a good strong group, then and only then should you spend time and money on training. You need the right ingredients to make a great meal even if the recipe is good, right! Email me if you would like a sample; greta@schulzbusiness.com. And ask!       Click here to share this post.

    After watching the two political conventions over the last few weeks I naturally asked people what they thought. “Oh I am definitely voting for Obama” I heard a lot yet several people I talked to said Romney was their man. I am so intrigued by how people make decisions. Maybe not all people mind you, but surely the majority of people make their decisions differently then you would probably think. The interesting part came after that question because my next question is always why do you like Obama or Why is Romney your man?, and the answers were so telling. “I really like Obama, he seems like he is a great guy. He’d be a good leader.” Or Mitt Romney has experience and seems to love our country.  “I really love Paul Ryan, he is really down to earth, and smart”. What really floored me was when I asked about their platform I got lots of blank stares. No one really knew what they stood for in particular and really didn’t seem to be concerned with it either.   I am not here to say that either candidate is better or worse then the other, nor do I profess to know politics better then anyone else, but I am amazed at the way the average person makes their decisions. Years ago in Florida there was an amendment that would, if passed, allow one particular industry to decrease taxes for themselves. Their industry only. Do you know they actually had an ad campaign that said “if we pass this amendment, we will have lower taxes”. The only ones getting lower taxes were them but the public bought it and the amendment passed! Crazy but true.   Now let’s look at selling and how this becomes relevant. Since you are typically selling to the average American, it is important to keep in mind that people make their decisions on things different then what you may think. If you believe your “platform” (features and benefits) are what is important you will often share them when a prospect asks about how you are different, often sharing one and two things in particular that you believe are most important again, to you.   Keep in mind, no one cares what you think, only what they themselves think and to uncover what they think is all that matters. We are all so caught up in telling people the important things about our product or service we forget to actually check to see if they think that is important to the person potentially looking to buy. You know what they say about assuming…   So do you think our politicians will heed this advise? It probably doesn’t matter much as long as Obama keeps asking for more time while smiling that gleaming smile and Romney keeps touting his morality.   Greta Schulz is president of Schulz Business SELLutions in West Palm Beach, Florida. She is the best selling author of "To Sell is Not to Sell". Greta does corporate training for fortune 1000 companies and she has an on-line training course for entrepreneurs. For more tips go to: www.schulzbusiness.com Click here to share this post.

As a principal of your organization, you clearly understand the importance of sales in the organization. You are wearing too many hats to play sales manager, as well, but do you really know how they are doing? If they aren’t hitting their revenue goals, do you know why? Is it a viable reason? Do they have a battle plan to change that?You have two challenges when your sales force prepares for battle:Challenge No. 1Like any kind of warfare, you have a distinct advantage when you can tap good and reliable intelligence. Here’s the problem: Your salespeople don’t get enough accurate intelligence about their prospects. As a result, their pipelines are filled with flaky opportunities. And your sales managers don’t have enough guts to call them on it.Here’s the litmus test: When your salespeople submit their forecasts, do you or your managers “adjust” them down for realism? It’s typically easier for salespeople and their managers to discuss why they didn’t win business, instead of asking themselves the right questions before going to battle.Here are some of the right questions:1. Can we win and should we pursue this opportunity?2. If yes, how do you know? What is the reasoning? A guess? A hunch?3. Which strategy should we adopt to ensure that we win? Why?To begin, ask your salespeople: “How much does it cost to win a new account?” Calculate the actual costs associated with generating a lead, a contact, an appointment, a proposal and a sale. Now, add in the opportunity cost of missed business they could have won if they weren’t wasting time on business that won’t close quickly.If you’re like most selling organizations, the cost per pursuit is several hundred or thousands of dollars. Multiply that by the number of opportunities you chased and didn’t close in the last 12 months. Staggering, isn’t it?Before your salespeople charge off to fight the next battle, ask them: “If this was your money, would you spend it?”Challenge No. 2Your salespeople don’t do enough planning work before going to battle. Before going into battle again, make sure your salespeople can answer these questions (honestly):• What are you trying to sell and, most importantly, why? Sounds simple enough until you actually try to quantify it.• Is the project funded? What if there’s not enough? Who has discretionary use of the funds? Who can get more? Are we speaking to the right person here?• What is the sale worth to the organization? Does the ROI justify the investment of time, money and effort?• Have we sold this prospect anything in the past? Who? What? Where? When? How? Why?• How many contacts have you already had with this prospect? How many phone calls, face-to-face meetings, etc.? Do you have a clear next step?• Do you have an organizational chart? Do you have an inside coach?• What has been (or will be) your sales strategy?• Where are you in the selling process? Here is a checklist:1. Were you invited in, or did you beg for an appointment?2. What were the prospect’s reasons for seeing you?3. What were the challenges, problems and frustrations you identified in the interview?4. How important is it to the prospect to fix those problems?5. How committed is the prospect to fixing those problems? (Time, effort, money, willingness to fail.)6. What agreement have you and the prospect reached concerning the decisions that will be made each step of the way?Few salespeople understand the cost of pursuing sales and often fill their funnels with bad business. Fewer think through winning strategies before going into sales “battle.”Ask your salespeople these fundamental sales questions before committing resources to a battle you cannot win.Successful sales professionals qualify vigorously and religiously before committing time and energy, so their closing ratios are 90 percent or better.So, what are yours?Greta Schulz is a sales consultant for businesses and entrepreneurs. For more sales training tips and tools, or to ask her a question, go to www.schulzbusiness.com or email greta@schulzbusiness.com. Click here to share this post.