The Sales Training and Coaching Podcast: Recent Episodes
Mike Allison & Jeremy Shere
Jeremy talks with sales trainer and coach Maggie Sarfo about training salespeople to sell to buyers who know more than ever about products and services and who have less time and tolerance for dealing with sales reps.
Key takeaways:
✦ Train reps to position themsevles as relevant, trusted partners within the first two minutes of their initial contact with a prospect. (Hint: it’s all about research!)
✦ Coach reps to uncover the #1 reason why prospects are looking for a solution and why they think your product or service might fit the bill.
✦ Train reps that they need to earn the right to ask prospects why they want to buy from them — what Maggie calls “The Magic Link.”
Connect with Maggie online:maggiesarfo.com
Jeremy talks with Debra Fletcher, Director of Sales Training at Stanley Martin Homes, about her perspective on sales as both an art and a science and how in her training she tries to not lose sight on the “art”: listening skills, body language, being authentic, and letting her trainees’ personalities shine through when working with prospects.
Key points:
✦ Metrics matter, but trainers also need to enable salespeople to use their authentic personalities to build rapport with prospects.
✦ Ask trainees about their mindset and passion for sales, i.e. why they chose sales as a profession.
✦ Use role-play and in-field coaching to reinforce training on listening skills, body language, and being authentic with prospects.
✦ Listening is crucial and harder than it seems. Reps needs to be trained on the importance of listening and not dominating the conversation when meeting with prospects.
Connect with Debra on LinkedIn:
In this episode of The Sales Training & Coaching Podcast, Jeremy talks with Russell Thackeray, a psychologist and learning and development consultant who specializes in helping companies and sales reps improve their resilience. For Thackeray, resilience means more than just bouncing back from failure. In a business context, resilience speaks to the ability of organizations and sales reps to perform at peak capacity during difficult times. And this matters, Thackeray says, because companies thrive when their sales forces are able to perform not only when everything goes according to plan but also when challenges arise, as they inevitably do.
Thackeray helps companies in two ways: 1) by evaluating their sales process to test and improve its resilience, and 2) by working with individual sales reps to helps them improve their resilience.
One key to developing a resilient sales process is having strong leaders to keep the process simple and flexible. K [...]
Mike interviews Andy Crotty and Chris Cummins of OTD (which stands for Our Training Department), a sales training and coaching consulting firm, about their strategies for making training and coaching stick and for training sales managers to become world-class coaches. It’s all about reinforcement and tailoring training and coaching to the specific needs of organizations and the people in those organizations and setting aside time for ongoing coaching.
Check out OTD online: http://otd.uk.com/
In this episode, Jeremy interviews Mike Kunkle, VP of Sales Transformation Services for Digital Transformation, Inc. Mike, a well known sales coach, consultant, author, and speaker, discusses why many sales organizations struggle to evolve a coaching culture and offer insights and tips for how companies can coach their reps more effectively by adopting a model for determing when coaching is needed and how to focus coaching efforts.
Check out Digital Transformation, Inc.: http://www.dxform.io
Find Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikekunkle/
Jeremy talks with sales and marketing alignment expert Jeff Davis, founder of The Sales + Marketing Alignment Summit, about how sales trainers and coaches can help align marketing and sales.
Jeff’s Website: https://www.jeffdavis2.com/#summit-section
Find Jeff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreydavisii/
Mike talks to sales coach, author, and speaker Mark Hunter about how bridging the gap between sales and marketing can help you coach your reps to stop being boring and start educating prospects about things they don’t already know!
Check out Mark’s website: thesaleshunter.com
Check out Mark’s latest book, High Profit Prospecting
Mike talks with Chris Black, vice president of sales and marketing at Graycon I.T., about his company’s “feet on the street,” customer-focused approach to sales and how his team enables their sales reps to provide a world-class buying experience.
You can learn more about Chris on his LinkedIn profile and read some of his posts on the Graycon blog.
In this episode Jeremy talks with sales leader, author, podcaster, blogger, and international speaker Anthony Iannarino about the differences between teaching, training, and coaching, and how and why to prioritize them in a sales context. Iannarino is the author of two books, The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need and The Lost Art of Closing, both available on Amazon.
Learn more about Anthony and check out his blog and podcast: thesalesblog.com
The very first episode of our brand new podcast! Mike Allison and I (Jeremy Shere) are really excited to launch the pod and use this short introductory episode to tell you a little bit about why we launched this venture and why you should subscribe. Enjoy!