Growth Dynamics Get Down

Symptoms:

Kathy is frustrated after a recent sales call. She believes if she was brave enough to ask about certain things, the call would have gone her way. It seems like she is constantly on defense and that the client is intentionally "pushing her buttons". Despite her training, it felt like she was always reacting to every little thing that was said rather than thinking about what was really going on. How can she find a way to consistently act like a professional on the call?

Monday Morning Manager

Symptoms:
One thing was certain: Derek was going to get an earful when he mustered the courage to tell his biggest customer that the truckload of material he was expecting was going to arrive three weeks late. With the last six months seeing all kinds of shipping headaches, the customer told Derek that their patience was wearing thin. They demanded a more reliable delivery schedule and that Derek be more honest and timely communicating with them.

Symptoms:

Andrea hated the pressure of selling. After three years in the business of selling payroll services Andrea thought she would be past this stage of professional development. Day after day, call after call it was still there; that pressure to convince someone that you are th

e perfect fit for their company when the market offered so many options. Andrea had to admit that at times she felt like she was lying to get a sale. The competition was not really any better or worse capable to deliver what the market expected for their services. At this point Andrea felt trapped by her inability to be gung-ho about her company. Was it like this in every sales job? Was there anywhere that the old feature and benefit routine did not exist in the sales culture?

Amanda was working through her list of live opportunities after putting her pipeline through a “kill it or close it” exercise. She set up appointments to move her sales process along with several of the live opportunities. She was steadfast in naming her meetings, sending homework, and even let some her more notorious feet draggers know these were decision meetings. She was ready to do what she had to do to start meeting her sales goals for the quarter. The week went by and she collected some yeses, found out some opportunities were not the right fit and still had two clients that could only utter the words, “sounds great. I need some more time.” No matter how much she tried to find the deal breakers, they would not budge. In fact, these last two holdouts had been in her pipeline for months. She just was not sure if anything was ever going to change.

Ella opened her calendar on Monday and saw Zoom invite after Zoom invite. She knew most of the calls were important but was not sure why so many of the calls needed to happen over a video platform. “Does everyone have to do everything on video,” Ella quietly asked herself. While video calls on Zoom and other platforms were helpful at the onset of the Covid pandemic for Ella to stay connected, now it seems like they are tying her more to her desk when she knows some of her clients were comfortable with face-to-face visits at this point. She knows she can use the video applications while in the field but worries some clients might feel she is not as engaged as they would like if she is not able to join with video capability. Ella is ready to move past the Covid challenges and return to business as usual.

Chris is concerned about his sales team. They are active, they are selling, and sales are up but margins are way down. The business model allows reps to be flexible in the field and sell at the prices they feel appropriate. But something is missing, and Chris is unsure how to help his field reps get more margin. He doesn't want to kill the ability of his reps to set pricing in the field, but doesn't know what information they need in order to be better at the task.

Rob had enough of the constant scrambling he did last year, so he has decided that this coming year he will focus on the resolve, the commitment, and the consistency required to be the pro that he knows he can be. Besides his business plan, he needs a personal roadmap that will guide him to the results he wants in the New Year.  This is driven by his dream, goal, and plan.