Make Winning a Habit [с таблицами]

In order to trust you, I need to know that you are dependable. I need to understand your principles and values and trust that you will never do anything that is not in my best interest. Principle-driven people are consistent, not situational. And principles are values acted on consistently.

If that trust grows into personal friendship, this is even better. This is when I not only trust you, but I also enjoy your company. I appreciate your counsel, and you are fun to be around. This is a great benefit to the buyer-seller relationship, but if it doesn’t have the underpinnings of strong product or performance, it can melt down quickly.

Even your best sponsors cannot go into implementation saying, “Buy from this guy. I like him. He’s my friend.” You have to build on both pillars of trust. I trust you because you are an industry expert, you know my business, and you can solve my problems. Or I will trust you because we work together, you are my friend, I know your family, and you will never let me down.

In the end, the only thing your company really has to sell is trust. It’s at the heart of brand management. Just look at all the images in advertising that focus on trust.

Trust Scorecard
Best Practices, Trust	Importance	Execution
	Degree of Importance (1 = low, 10 = high)	Agree, but we never do this	We sometimes do this	We often do this	We do this consistently
Individual
Salespeople are trained in fundamental skills for discovery, linkage, and presentation.
Opportunity
We consistently conduct needs assessments with the client before showing our product and solutions.
We consistently debrief each reference to get perspective of where we are in the sale.
Account Management
Our references are developed, rewarded, and their time treated respectfully.
We consistently document our value to our existing clients.
We have earned preferred vendor status in accounts.
We get exclusive evaluations and noncompetitive business.
We maintain continuity of the same reps on the same accounts from year to year.
We conduct customer satisfaction and loyalty assessments regularly.
Industry/Market
Our sales force is organized and focused by industry so we can focus on industry-specific solutions for our clients.

SECTION VII: Transformation

CHAPTER 9: Transformation — Making It Stick

Until new behaviors are rooted in social norms and shared values, they are subject to degradation as soon as the pressure for change is removed

John Kotter, “What Leaders Really Do,”Harvard Business Review, 1999

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Peter Drucker

Over the past 30 years I’ve had a lot of managers come to me looking for improvement. Some of them are ready to make drastic changes and are willing to do whatever it takes to solve their business problems. Others aren’t comfortable with that much change. They want improvement but not transformation. Others just want a speech. Some want a miracle.

To achieve true competitive advantage, obviously there has to be a lasting top-management commitment to full integration of all sales processes from hiring to training to compensation to team roles and responsibilities, rewards, and performance. To really make it stick, managers have to get back into both deal coaching and performance coaching.

I would start by requiring every manager to read Larry

Bossidy and Ram Charan’s excellent book, Execution, the Discipline of Getting Things Done. It focuses on what it takes to build a culture of execution in all areas. One of my favorite quotes from the book is, “Coaching is the single most important part of expanding others capabilities. It’s the difference between giving orders and teaching people how to get things done. Good leaders regard every encounter as an opportunity to coach.”

The key is integrating these new processes, embedding them in every aspect of your culture from management language to forecasting, the sales cycle, and compensation.

How Salespeople Learn: C.A.S.H. Learning Model

Before you can transform your sales force, you have to understand how adults learn. In addition, salespeople learn differently from other adults. In our experience, there are four steps: curiosity, awareness, skill, and habit (see Figure 9–1).

Curiosity

Curiosity is the seed of learning — the individual has to bring this to the table. In our sessions, we always have a mixture of sponges, vacationers, and prisoners. The first two hours are spent getting the prisoners to unfold their arms. They are prisoners of their own experience.

We have to create a gap between where they are and where they need to be to survive and thrive as the demands of selling and the buyer evolve. They need to understand that they must either grow or go.

Awareness

New awareness is important to personal growth. Reading and training are essential. By definition, a system cannot change itself from within. It takes outside forces. But you can’t get competitive advantage from awareness alone. It comes from speed of reaction and execution.

For many people, personal growth and development after college often stagnate or are limited to gaining the skills and knowledge needed to perform their current job. For salespeople, however, the competencies required to perform in today’s market have escalated because they now need to sell to all levels of their client organizations.