1.  The root causes of the “Growth Trap” that severely restrict profitable growth
2.  How to eliminate Sales Ghosts permanently from your organization
3.  How to dramatically improve the effectiveness of your sales hiring process
4.  How to get a free tool to calculate the cost of your organization’s Sales Ghosts

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As we approach the end of of Q1 2010 it’s time once again to look at the scoreboard to see how your sales team is tracking toward your revenue goal. How are they doing? And how are you doing holding them accountable to deliver?

Here are some thoughts about improving accountability from Dave Kurlan, thought leader in sales effectiveness and salesforce development, and author of Baseline Selling (www.baselineselling.com).

A priest was sharing his frustration over parishioners who took shortcuts and left church early. At a parish he was assigned to earlier in his career, parishioners received the host and exited via the side door without returning to their seats for the remainder of the service. He wondered how many of them had simply developed a bad habit and challenged them by saying, “The next time you find yourself leaving early, ask yourself, ‘why am I doing this?’” A lady approached him after the service and felt terrible about all of this. She said that she had been leaving early to tend to her sick husband. The Priest said that this didn’t apply to her, she was already making a sacrifice by attending, and she should care for her husband. She paused and finally said, “but he passed away three years ago!”

This story got me wondering about the widespread misuse of the sales process. There are certain steps that must be executed at specific times to assure a successful outcome. However, undisciplined salespeople are often tempted to skip steps when prospects ask for prices, quotes, proposals, demos, references, and presentations much earlier than the process allows for. Once in a while these salespeople get lucky and get the business. And then they start skipping the steps they’ve been trained to follow because, after all, they are more comfortable and confident at presenting, proposing, quoting and demoing, than they are with listening, questioning, probing and identifying compelling reasons to buy. Like the lady with the sick husband, they take steps that aren’t necessary or desirable, simply out of habit.

Sales Management’s number one priority is to assure that salespeople don’t fall into old habits, take shortcuts, get lazy, or avoid steps in the sales process where they aren’t as skilled or comfortable. Once your customized, optimized, integrated sales process is in place and introduced, my top 10 rules for all sales processes, strategies and tactics are:

1. This isn’t voluntary
2. There are no exceptions
3. We live it and breathe it
4. Hold them (and yourself) accountable to it
5. Coach to it daily
6. Reinforce it
7. Point out what happens when they skip steps
8. Show them what happens when they execute
9. Non compliance has consequences
10. Practice daily

What bad habits have taken hold with your salespeople?  Follow Dave’s 10 steps to strengthen your sales leadership, to reinforce the fundamentals, and to bring out the best in your team.

Here’s the answer.

Take 4 minutes to watch this video. You’ll see numerous Social Media ROI examples and a number of effective Social Media strategies. I promise it will impact your thinking about social media as a tool of business. In fact, the statistics alone will blow your mind.

Welcome to the world of Socialnomics!  Are you swimming with the current?

Here are 5 (invisible) reasons why your salespeople will underperform in 2010:

1. They have a need for approval
Many people choose sales after being told they have a perfect personality for selling. While that could be true, many of those same people feel complete only when other people like them. Salespeople who are easily liked have a great advantage, but salespeople who need their prospects to like them often make that a priority over getting the business. Salespeople with need for approval have difficulty asking tough questions, have a fear of rejection, and avoid confrontation.

2. They become emotionally involved
Salespeople who think, analyze, create, strategize or otherwise talk to themselves when prospects catch them by surprise become emotionally involved instead of remaining in the moment. When they are emotionally involved, their listening skills tend to be self-focused rather than prospect focused, causing them to miss important points and lose control of their meetings.

3. They rehearse self-limiting beliefs
Every salesperson has as many as 60 beliefs that either support the selling process (“I have the ability to be effective with company presidents”) or sabotage it (”I don’t like making cold calls”). Ineffective salespeople often have 10 or more of these self-limiting records playing over and over in their heads while more effective salespeople have very few.

4. They have a non-supportive buy cycle
The buy cycle refers to the salesperson’s own personal buying habits and how they make major purchases for themselves. Most ineffective salespeople have non-supportive buy cycles: they think it over before making a decision, they comparison shop, they shop for the lowest price, they perform research or perceive that a relatively small amount of money is a lot. When their prospects engage in this very same behavior, the salesperson unconsciously understands (has empathy), and their techniques for handling stalls and put-offs of this kind are either not used at all or are used ineffectively.

5. They are uncomfortable with issues involving money
Many salespeople are uncomfortable escalating a question about budget or whether a prospect can afford the product or service being offered to the next level. Their discomfort prevents them from helping a prospect figure out how to pay or even (more creatively) where the money could possibly come from. When prospects don’t have the budget, can’t envision increasing the budget or don’t know how they can find the money, the salesperson empathizes as opposed to digging deeper, asking questions, and making suggestions to resolve the monetary shortage.

Of the 21 dimensions we use to assess sales effectiveness and develop salespeople, these 5 are the most common and significant inhibitors to sales success. They are also the most challenging to detect and remedy.

You can stack the deck for 2010 in your favor by proactively developing current sales staff in each of these 5 dimensions and by modifying your sales recruiting process to screen for them before you hire. And by the way, if you don’t, the costs associated with an endless recruiting, training, and turnover cycle for your sales team could hurt you even more than the lost revenue!

Want more sales in 2010 and a stable, productive sales team? Then eliminate the 5 (invisible) reasons why your salespeople underperform!

Choose the best answer from the options to discover your Influence Quotient. Dr Robert Cialdini, the leading expert on Influence and Persuasion presents a simple quiz that can help you (and your team) understand your ability to recognize influence and persuasion techniques.

If you don’t have time to take the quiz, but want to learn about the answers, click here.

1. Upon first entering the office of the purchasing manager of a company with whom you would like to do business, you notice a picture of the team mascot of your alma mater on the wall. You should:

1. Mention that you went to the same university prior to discussing business.
2. Mention that you went to the same university after discussing business.
3. Not mention this personal similarity in a business meeting.
4. Discuss that you went to the same university only if the client brings up the topic.

2. You are attempting to persuade the Board of Directors of your company that it is in your company’s best interest to implement a costly revision to your back-office functions. You know that the Board is very concerned about costs, so you have also formulated two alternate plans that are less costly and less comprehensive. When it comes time for your presentation, which of the following strategies should you use to obtain the optimal results (the greatest degree of change the Board will support)?

1. Describe the least expensive revision first.
2. Describe the mid-range revision first, and then ask the Chair if s/he would like to hear the alternate plans.
3. Describe the most expensive revision first, then the mid-range, and then the least costly plan.
4. Ask the Chair which plan s/he is most interested in and then describe that plan only.

3. Your company is launching a new product and your boss asks you to make a marketing decision. Your boss is considering two options to generate initial interest from the public: offering a price reduction on the product for a “limited-time” or offering a price reduction for a “limited number” of the product. Which approach should you recommend to get the greatest interest from the public?

1. “limited-time”
2. “limited-number”
3. Either option will produce the same positive results.
4. Neither option will produce positive results.

4. You have an important meeting with a prospective client later today. You know from your previous discussions that the prospect is impressed with your proposal, but does not believe that implementing your ideas at this particular time is a top priority. Which of the following approaches to the meeting would provide you with the greatest chance of persuading the prospect to approve your proposal in the shortest period of time?

1. Emphasize what the prospect will lose if he does not implement your ideas at the present time.
2. Emphasize the positive features and benefits of your proposal.
3. Ask the prospect to outline his objections to your proposal.
4. Begin with a request for a commitment and then try to close the sale.

5. Imagine you are the (unlucky) campaign manager of a political candidate who has recently lost the public’s trust. Now imagine that the candidate wants to rebuild his reputation through profiling himself as a touch crime fighter. Even though his opponent has a credible track record in his regard. Of the following choices, which represents the best way for your candidate to start his next ad?

1. “My opponent has not gone far enough in fighting crime…”
2. “Many have supported my ability and willingness to fight crime…”
3. “Although my opponent has a good record of fighting crime…”
4. “Fighting crime is a critical issue…”

6. Imagine you are a financial advisor, and you believe that a young client of yours is invested too conservatively. In order to persuade her to invest in riskier, high-return investments, you should concentrate on describing:

1. How others like her have made similar mistakes. (appeal to consensus)
2. What she stands to gain if she invests in riskier options. (appeal to greed)
3. What she stands to lose if she does not invest in riskier options. (appeal to loss)
4. The importance of the two of you working as a team on this issue.

7. You are attempting to sell your professional services to a medium-sized software company. They have never done business with you before and are uncertain as to whether they should select your company. You will increase your persuasiveness the most by:

1. Providing them with a testimonial from Microsoft, who utilizes your services currently
2. Providing them with a master list of all your clients
3. Talking about other clients’ experiences with your company in general ways, without providing any specific testimonials.
4. Providing them with several testimonials from other medium-sized software companies who are your current clients.

8. If you have a new piece of information, when should you mention that it is new?

1. Before you present the information.
2. In the middle of the presentation of the information.
3. After the presentation of the information.
4. You should not mention that it is new information.

9. You have responsibility for motivating your company’s sales force to increase its annual performance. You were told by your supervisor to set goals for the sales people and hold them accountable. Which of the following strategies would be the most effective?

1. Set a goal for each employee based on his or her prior year’s performance and inform each of the goal.
2. Have each employee set a reasonable private goal for themselves.
3. Have each employee publicly state a reasonable goal for the year.
4. Have each employee set an unrealistically high personal goal, and keep it private.

10. You are having difficulty with employee attrition, so you organize a retreat for your office to energize your employees. You want to give each a gift for attending that will enhance the employee’s commitment to give back to the organization. Which one of the following strategies is likely to produce the best results?

1. Give them all the same, expensive gift with your company’s name engraved on it.
2. Give them no gifts, but thank them for attending.
3. Give each employee a personalized gift that is meaningful, even if it is not expensive
4. Give gifts only to those employees who complete the evaluation forms for the retreat.

Click here for the answers!

Want to learn more?  Dr. Robert Cialdini will be leading his first ever 90 minute LIVE video webcast November 17th from 12:00 — 1:30 pm ET.  As author of one of the Top 100 business books of all time — considered by most critics in the Top 10 — his principles are timeless and continue to drive important decisions around the globe. The webcast is just $199/individual; $495/company license (unlimited computers) — and includes access to the archived program for three months after the live event. Register here.

They offer very sound advice! The following is reprinted from Harvey Mackay, author and Chairman of Mackay Envelope Corporation.

We all know about the original Ten Commandments, but have you ever heard of the Second Ten Commandments? I don’t remember who sent them to me – these pearls of wisdom have been often attributed to one Elodie Armstrong – but I sure would like to thank him or her for sharing this wisdom.

Here they are with my spin on them:

1. Thou shall not worry, for worry is the most unproductive of all human activities. A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work. People get so busy worrying about yesterday or tomorrow, they forget about today. And today is what you have to work with.

2. Thou shall not be fearful, for most of the things we fear never come to pass. Every crisis we face is multiplied when we act out of fear. When we fear something, we empower it. If we refuse to concede to our fear, there is nothing to fear.

3. Thou shall not cross bridges before you come to them, for no one yet has succeeded in accomplishing this. Tomorrow’s problems may not even be problems when tomorrow comes.

4. Thou shall face each problem as it comes. You can only handle one at a time anyway. In one of my favorite “Peanuts” comic strips, Linus says to Charlie Brown, “There is no problem so big it cannot be run away from.” I chuckle every time I think about it, because it sounds like such a simple solution. Problem-solving is not easy, so don’t make it harder than it is.

5. Thou shall not take problems to bed with you, for they make very poor bedfellows. If I wake up thinking of a problem, I tell myself it will seem lighter in the morning, and it always is.

6. Thou shall not borrow other people’s problems. They can better care for them than you can. I confess that I have broken this commandment because I wanted to help someone, without being asked, or I thought I was more equipped to handle a situation. But I wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences, either.

7. Thou shall not try to relive yesterday. For good or ill, it is forever gone. Concentrate on what is happening in your life and be happy now. We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get a better job, make more money, get married, have a baby, buy a bigger house and so on. Yet the accomplishment of any of those events may not make any difference at all. The Declaration of Independence says we are endowed “with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” You are responsible for your own happiness.

8. Thou shall be a good listener, for only when you listen do you hear ideas different from your own. You can win more friends with your ears than with your mouth. Hearing is one of the body’s five senses, but listening is an art. Your success could hinge on whether you have mastered the skill of listening. Most people won’t listen to what you’re saying unless they already feel that you have listened to them. When we feel we are being listened to, it makes us feel as if we are being taken seriously and what we say really matters.

9. Thou shall not become bogged down by frustration, for 90 percent of it is rooted in self-pity and will only interfere with positive action. Seriously, has frustration ever improved a situation? Better to take a break, collect your thoughts, and redirect your attention to a positive first step. Then, go on from there.

10. Thou shall count thy blessings, never overlooking the small ones, for a lot of small blessings add up to a big one. We all have something to be grateful for, even on the worst days. Hey, you’re still on the green side of the grass, aren’t you?

Although Mackay’s “second” Ten Commandments aren’t chiseled in stone, try them! They’ll certainly make your life less rocky.

Three Phases of Political Competence

Political competence is a three-phase process. To bring people to your side, you must follow a systematic sequence. Otherwise, you may spend too much time talking with people who don’t need to be convinced of your idea’s merits. You may also fail to identify your chief opponents before they seize the opportunity to derail your efforts.

1. Map Your Political Terrain

First, identify all stakeholders—anyone who has an interest in, or who would be affected by, your idea—and how they will react. Some resistance is inevitable. You must anticipate others’ reactions, identify allies and resisters, analyze their goals and understand their agendas.

When you face objections, don’t go to individuals’ bosses or peers to undercut their arguments. Instead, ask them questions to determine their goals. A stakeholder may share your goal, but not your implementation approach; disagree with your goal, but share your approach to change; share neither; or share both. You can identify potential allies and resisters with direct questioning.

2. Get Others on Your Side

Build your coalition—a politically mobilized group committed to implementing your idea because doing so will generate valued benefits.

Creating coalitions is the most critical step in exercising your political competence. How do you win support? You need to be credible. You communicate credibility by letting potential allies and resisters know about your expertise, demonstrating personal integrity, and showing you have access to important people and information.

Through informal conversations, meetings and office drop-ins, you need to explain your position, keeping in mind four different motivational styles:

Rational: Use statistics and numbers to convince data-driven people how your proposal will save money, time or resources.

Mimicking: Cite successful companies that have benefited from similar ideas when dealing with people who are interested in best practices.

Regulation: For those concerned about rules and compliance, show how your idea will help in these areas.

Expectations: For those driven by a need to meet or exceed expectations, explain how your proposal will please customers, shareholders and the community.

3. Make Things Happen

You must win others’ buy-in by making it clear there’s a payoff for supporting your effort and drawbacks for not joining your coalition. Show how implementing your idea will ease their workload, increase their visibility within the organization or help them cut costs in their unit.

Once you’ve persuaded people to join your coalition, you’ve established a base that will legitimize your idea. Coalition members will then use their networks to evangelize for you.

As the coalition grows, don’t lose sight of the need for active leadership to keep members focused and sustain momentum. Watch for complacency and manage conflicts and disagreements over goals or processes. These are inevitable and must be resolved.

Mastering only certain parts of the three identified phases will not yield success. The following leadership archetypes sabotage themselves by failing to complete all three phases when attempting to generate and implement change.

The Political Analyst

Don’t be fooled into thinking that astute political analysts have high political competency. Analysts are skilled at anticipating others’ reactions and understanding their agendas, but they can’t get people to join their side. They’re incapable of sustaining the dialogue and interactions necessary to build coalitions. They may try to make things happen, but mapping the terrain is only the first step—and it’s never enough.

The Consensus Builder

Consensus builders do their political mapping, understand the terrain of allies and resisters, and spend time building coalitions—but they never seem to move beyond this point. They’re unable to mobilize supporters in a way that makes things happen.

Consensus builders have very strong process capabilities. The scale often tips in their favor because they can get people on board and they generally have a favorable reputation, which attracts resources and people.

They also have the ability to prolong meetings, insisting that conferences are the solution to every problem. An organization with too many consensus builders will spend an inordinate amount of time meeting, discussing, evaluating and never really accomplishing much.

Politically competent leaders map the terrain, get people on their side by building a coalition and lead the coalition to achieve results.

Reducing Risk through Politics

There are risks with any course of action you take. You sometimes have incomplete or inadequate information when making a decision. Building a coalition through dialogue with its members pushes valuable information to the surface.

You are open to criticism and politically vulnerable whenever you make a decision. Politically competent leaders reduce risk by getting as many people as possible on their side. Building a coalition is a search process for the best solution.

Building a coalition, bringing people together and solidifying/expanding your base will leave you less vulnerable to criticism. It’s more difficult to attack a leader who has built a large base of support throughout the organization.

Competent leaders accumulate political currency, making it easier for them to take on future projects. They capitalize on their successes to expand their coalition and prepare for further actions.

Political savvy is a vital competence for any executive, but it’s not taught in leadership or grad school courses. In fact, the term “office politics” has received a bad rap. (Words like “Machiavellian,” “manipulative” and “conspiratorial” come to mind.)

Tales of political sabotage, power plays and turf wars are part of any organization’s history. Nonetheless, political competence is the one skill everyone wishes to have more of—but no one talks about it. When you ask people how they achieve results within their organizations, they cite market analysis, strategic planning and brainstorming. They never mention politics.

Until recently, few books explained how to use political competence to build one’s career, improve a team’s results or boost the company’s bottom line. Samuel B. Bacharach, director of Cornell University’s Institute for Workplace Studies, recently published Get Them on Your Side. Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman have written Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success. Art Kleiner weighs in with Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success. These books shed light on this crucial competency, which every leader needs to master.

Political competence is the “ability to understand what you can and cannot control, when to take action, who is going to resist your agenda, and whom you need on your side. It’s about knowing how to map the political terrain and get others on your side, as well as lead coalitions,” according to Prof. Bacharach.

Many individuals have good ideas that, if implemented, could yield positive results for their companies. Sometimes, these ideas fall flat because the leaders who propose them cannot gain support from key people. They are unsuccessful in building a coalition to bring an idea into practical use.

A corporate version of survival of the fittest exists, especially in tough, competitive economic times. No one wants to admit that destructive politics and gamesmanship go on, but intense pressure to succeed drives some executives to use their political savvy to win by any means.

Defining Political Savvy

It’s naive to suggest that all office politics are destructive and unethical. If you define politics in such a narrow and negative way, you overlook the value of political awareness and skill. If political astuteness is combined with the right values, it can be an advantage for you, your team and your organization.

“Organizational politics are informal, unofficial, and sometimes behind-the-scenes efforts to sell ideas, influence an organization, increase power, or achieve other targeted objectives,” according to Brandon and Seldman in Survival of the Savvy.

In this definition, there is nothing either positive or negative about politics. The term is value-free. Whether organizational politics are destructive or constructive is determined by two criteria:

1. Whether the targeted objectives reflect the company’s interests or merely one’s self-interest

2. Whether the influence efforts used to achieve these objectives have integrity

Political savvy and skill can help ethical, competent leaders sell their ideas and influence others to benefit the organization.

Ignore at Your Own Risk

There are several important reasons to acquire political savvy:

1. Ignoring its existence is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. When political astuteness is combined with ethics and integrity, it can produce positive results for you, your team and your organization.

2. By avoiding or denying its existence, you underestimate how political behavior can destroy careers, a company’s reputation and overall performance.

3. If you define politics in only negative terms, you are naively under-political, which leaves you vulnerable to overly political, self-serving individuals.

You must develop political skills to survive and thrive in any organization. Overly political people can—and do—earn positions of power, and they can damage competent, loyal individuals who don’t play their game. You need high-integrity political tactics to play a better game.

When people get burned by overly political agendas, they may quit their jobs, only to find even more political game-playing at the next company they join. Worse, if they choose to stay in a politically charged workplace, they may allow their intimidation or resentment to drain their energy and compromise their performance. When this happens, they become disengaged.

It’s far better to recognize that organizational politics exist in both constructive and destructive forms. There’s simply no escaping it. That’s why it’s essential to learn how to use one’s political savvy with integrity. Nonmanipulative tactics can help you harness the power of politics in a way that brings results. Political astuteness can be a character virtue and a company asset—if you learn to use it ethically.

Leaders are remembered for their best and worst judgment calls, especially when the stakes are high, information is limited and the correct call is far from obvious. In the face of ambiguity, uncertainty and conflicting demands, the quality of a leader’s judgment and decision making determines the entire organization’s fate.

That’s why leadership experts Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis claim judgment is the essence of leadership. In their popular book, Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls (Portfolio, 2007), they write: “With good judgment, little else matters.  Without it, nothing else matters.”

But there’s no one-size-fits-all way to make a judgment call, the authors emphasize. Every organization has distinct problems, people and solutions.

A Framework for Judgment

A judgment call should not be viewed as a single-point-in-time event.

The process begins when leaders recognize the need for change and for a decision. They consequently frame and name the issue, set clear goals and objectives, align people and continue through successful execution.

Three Critical Judgment Domains

People: Leaders cannot set sound direction and strategy for their enterprises or deal with crises without smart judgment calls about the people on their teams. This is definitely the most complex domain. Sound judgments about people require leaders to:

1. Anticipate the need for key personnel changes
2. Specify leadership requirements with an eye toward the future – not the rearview mirror
3. Mobilize and align the social network to support the right call
4. Make the process transparent so it can be deemed fair
5. Make it happen
6. Provide continuous support to achieve success

Strategy: When the current strategic road fails to lead to success, the leader must find a new path. The quality and viability of a strategic judgment call is a function of:

1.      The leader’s ability to look over the horizon and frame the right question

2.      The people – both internal and external to the organization – with whom he/she chooses to interact

Crisis: During a crisis, leaders must have clear values and know their ultimate goals. A poorly handled crisis can lead to business failure.

The Process of Making Judgment Calls

In all three domains, good decision making always involves a process that starts with recognizing the need for the call, with steps that facilitate effective execution.

1. The Preparation Phase: This phase includes sensing and identifying the need for a judgment call, framing and naming the judgment call, and mobilizing and aligning the right people. While these steps may seem obvious, many factors can contribute to faulty framing and naming, which can result in a bad judgment call. For example, what is your process to separate symptoms from underlying causes? It’s important to allow “redo moments” and continually adjust to get it right.
2. The Call Phase (Making the Judgment Call): There’s a moment when leaders make the call, based on their views of the time horizon and the sufficiency of people’s input and involvement.
3. The Execution/Action Phase: Once a clear call is made, execution is a critical part of the process. Resources, people, capital, information and technology must be mobilized to make it happen. During this phase, feedback loops allow for adjustments.

Your Storyline and Why it Matters

Winning leaders are teachers, and they teach by telling stories. They develop a teachable point of view: valuable knowledge and experiences that convey ideas and values to energize others.

This teachable point of view is most valuable when it is woven into a storyline for the organization’s future success. As a living story, it helps the leader make the judgment call and makes the story become reality because it enlists and energizes others.

Winning story lines address three areas:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where are we going? (The inspirational storyline boosts the motivation for change and defines the goal)
3. How are we going to get there?

If judgment calls are difficult for you, or if you have difficulty creating the storyline for your organizational vision, it’s probably time to revisit these 3 key, strategic questions.