These "talking catalogs" start running around "telling" instead of "selling" and the expected storm decays to a light drizzle. The salespeople get depressed at their lack of success, become unmotivated, and finally quit only to be replaced by a second line of newly hired replacements and the cycle repeats itself.
Product knowledge is good but it's not enough by itself. People need to be shown or trained on how to properly communicate the knowledge to qualified prospects.
While formal sales training is good, it doesn't need to be formal. Using the old blind-leading-the-blind technique, where you send the new person out with a successful old timer, is certainly better than simply dropping the new salesperson into the deep end of the pool and hoping the weight of all the product knowledge doesn't prevent him from resurfacing.
In addition to product knowledge training, time should also be spent covering company policies and procedures as well as providing some basic sales training that is specific to your particular marketplace.
Sales Training
This is a key area that is often overlooked when bringing a new salesperson up to speed. Keep in mind that most salespeople you hire will have had no formal sales training and probably don't know what they don't know. You can help them by either providing formal sales training, or as a minimum, enough information to get up to speed from a selling point of view. Sales training can be broken down into three broad sections:
1. Customers/Prospects/Suspects
* Who are current customers?
* Are there any house or protected accounts?
* Are there any split or shared accounts?
* What does a typical customer profile look like?
* Who has bought these products or services in the past?
* Who is a typical prospect for the product or service?
* How do I identify a suspect?
2. Sales Territory
* What defines my sales territory?
* What assistance will be provided in helping me organize my sales area?
* Will I have assigned accounts/clients/customers?
* Is there any historical sales information available?
* Who was handling the accounts previously?
* What problem accounts are there? Why?
3. Selling Techniques
* What are some proven sales techniques for these products?
* What are some of the things to avoid?
* What prospecting techniques have worked in the past?
* What questions do I need to ask to properly qualify a prospect?
* What common objections am I likely to come up against and how do I handle them?
* What are some time-tested closes that work in this business?
* What do your best salespeople do well?
* How could your best salespeople be even better?
* What selling habits should I avoid?
Joint Sales Calls
Should you send the new salesperson out on joint sales calls with more seasoned people? Yes, but only after he or she has had a chance to get acclimatized to the company and the other salespeople. This will probably take a few days to a few weeks. I know you want to get the person into the field as soon as you can but don't send him into battle prematurely.
If you do decide to send the new salesperson out on joint calls, I suggest you debrief him after the joint sales calls. Ask him what questions he might have as a result of the joint call. Also debrief the salesperson who travelled with the new body. What were his impressions of the new person? Were there any potential problems that arose? Determine if you have a keeper.
Don't depend on joint calls to provide any real sales training. The best that can happen is the new salesperson gets to see how the old salesperson does it, and there's no guarantee the old salesperson is doing it right.
Don't Do It All Yourself
There's no reason why the sales manager has to carry the whole burden of the new salesperson's training. If one of your existing salespeople has aspirations towards sales management, give him an opportunity to prepare himself for a future promotion by taking on some of the responsibility to get the new person started on the right foot.
Not only does this remove some of the responsibility from your shoulders, it provides the new person an opportunity to meet and get to know others within the firm.
Take the Time To Do It Right
A common response to this list is, "It's going to take a lot of time to go through all this with the new salesperson and I don't have the spare time." You're right. It is going to take a lot of time, and nobody has any spare time anymore.
This is not a spare-time project; it's a prime-time project. That's why you have to plan it out in advance. That's why you have to clear your slate so you will have the time during the first few days (or weeks) to get the new salesperson up to speed as quickly as possible.
Your investment will increase the chances that your new salespeople will succeed and definitely reduce the odds of failure.
Somebody's Doing Me Right
Critical Success Factors of the People behind the Best Affiliate Programs
EXCELLENT PRODUCT OR SERVICE ? The success behind the best affiliate programs is not primarily due to marketing expertise alone. Beyond that, the success that these programs achieved was mainly due to the type of product or service being endorsed by its affiliates. If you don't have an excellent product or service to begin with, you can only achieve marginal and short term success from your affiliate program.
It's important that you concentrate first on finding the right product or service to sell before worrying about affiliate programs.
FORTITUDE ? If you want the street slang counterpart for it, fortitude is also known as ?staying power?. The people behind the best affiliate programs, believe it or not, went through the same things that you're experiencing right now, obviously not to the same degree but your experiences are fundamentally the same.
What separates these people from others is their fortitude. They understood that it takes a considerable amount of time for any affiliate program to achieve success. As long as they were reasonably certain about the soundness and effectiveness of their plans and strategies, these people were willing to wait and bide their time, even if it seemed that there was no tomorrow and absolutely nothing was happening to their affiliate programs.
But something did happen, and all their waiting paid off. It can happen to you too, if you're waiting with the right affiliate marketing strategy.
THE POWER OF ADWORD OR ADSENSE ? Pay per click ads or any of its improved versions is the best way to advertise about your products and services. It is also integral to the success of your affiliate program. Indeed, if you make a study of the best affiliate programs presently in the Internet, you'll see how most ? if not ? all of them have made use of this type of advertising.
Of course, making use of adwords or Ad Sense is not enough to guarantee total success for your affiliate program. You also need to understand the types of powers it does have and to what extent it can be used before you can effectively incorporate it to your affiliate program.
IT'S ALL ABOUT SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ? The people behind the best affiliate programs in the Internet don't allow themselves to depend completely on other people when it comes to the SEO aspect of their programs. If you want to experience success, you need to understand exactly what's required from you and what you can do about it.
Choosing to delegate the unpleasant and troublesome aspects of the job is not the way to go about it. If you don't take time to understand the principles behind SEO and its various techniques and choose to let someone take care of it, how will you know if what's being done for your affiliate program is right?
SEO is what drives traffic to your website, so isn't that enough reason and motivation for you to sit down and finally tackle the concept of search engine optimization?
ALWAYS GET SECOND PEOPLE OPINION ? Although the people behind the best affiliate programs are in some way or another confident about their decisions and choices, this doesn't mean that they are convinced they know all there is to know about the Internet and about the products or services being advertised.
Adopting such an attitude is in fact career suicide. If you wish for your affiliate program to work, you need to acquire a second or even a third opinion about what you're doing. Naturally choose someone you trust, capable of dishing out the truth no matter how unpleasant and whose expertise is a given. Don't feel bad if you hear something critical, because you need to learn about these deficiencies in order for your affiliate program to approve.
WHERE TO FIND CUSTOMER LOYALTY ? Old clients are easier and harder to please than new ones depending on the situation. Gather the contact details of die-hard customers by building an email opt in list. With such a list, you're guaranteed an ear that's ready and willing to listen to what you have to offer!
Incorpate all the factors discussed in your strategy and you're sure to end up with a winning affiliate program as well!
Both Brian Jeffrey & Mario Churchill - are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Brian Jeffrey has sinced written about articles on various topics from Web Development, Careers and Job Hunting and Affiliate Programs. Brian Jeffrey is the President of Salesforce Assessments Ltd. His company helps sales managers take the guesswork out of hiring salespeople by providing an easy-to-use online assessment tool. For more articles like this and your free copy of "The 8 Bigges. Brian Jeffrey's top article generates over 1000 views. to your Favourites.
Mario Churchill - has sinced written about articles on various topics from . Mario Churchill is a freelance author and has written over 200 articles on various subjects. For more information on the or to find a. Mario Churchill -'s top article . to your Favourites.
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