Identifying what is considered essential and desirable competencies for sales effectiveness and then supporting your sales team to grow in these areas will result in your business improving the opportunity to generate revenue. Organizations’ who understand the factors which are impacting on their overall sales efficiency will discover three main benefits from this investment and be on the road to building sustainability.

Improved Employee Capability

Has your sales team been working for the company for a while? Do you think of them experts in your products or services? Does the whole sales team show a similar level of capability? If there’s inconsistency in the overall sales capability particularly how they apply their experience to relate to consumers. Is this damaging your overall sales efforts?

Through identifying what’s considered necessary capabilities and then developing customised sales training to support the sales team, your organisation would be investing in targeted and measured results to develop the teams ability to maximise their sales efficiency.

Tapping into Sales Potential

How do you presently measure your sales teams’ performance? Do you make use of KPI’s, sales results or other lag measures? Would you like to be able to predict an individual’s performance through understanding their potential? Every individual has certain values, beliefs, interests, abilities, personality and motivation that they bring to the workplace. These factors could either have a positive or negative impact on a person’s behavior at work. Imagine being able to tap into the people's natural preferences and use their key strengths to be able to predict their performance.

Investing in objective assessment and customised sales training takes the “guess work” out of what areas to focus your sales training efforts to maximise sales effectiveness and offer the organisation with objective data to realize how to measure and master sales potential.

Improved Customer Relations

Does your sales team understand how they can contribute to your sales strategy? Do they have a common understanding of what is expected in terms of developing positive customer relations? Many people would like to believe that they’re offering their clients with the biggest level of customer service. But, what they perceive as positive customer service and what the consumer perceives as positive customer service may be two completely different things.

Customised sales training supports the organisation to align the sales teams’ skills and behaviours to the business objectives. In practical terms, this would help the sales team develop various skills including identifying how to approach, talk to, and finish off business with every client. As a result the business would have defined sales techniques, skills, behaviours and processes which would support it to achieve it is sales targets and improve the businesses ability to develop sustainability.

Why do a lot of people have such a feeling of anxiety and stress over picking up the telephone and just offering a service over the phone? Well it is simply because they understand in their mind that calling just "to close" a customer and having a concealed agendas is what upsets the customer on the other line. It's this uncomfortable feeling that rejection might happen and that we are invading other people's lives that makes us paranoid to pick up the phone. This fear of rejection happens because some part of us knows that going straight for an appointment or for an order over the phone without any trust is unnatural. Would you approach someone in a bar and say "Hi my name is……. Give me your number?" or "Hi my name is…………. And what I do is…………… Would It Be Okay If I I sign you up for a great service I offer?" The answer is certainly "NO" because you understand that even in face to face meetings you will not be welcomed by anyone until you have made that trust and feeling of comfort that would make someone want to listen. And this is where conventional sales sense fails us.

Hence naturally we feel anxious if we dump information and call on an unwary receiver and then 'hope' that they will continue listening to us. Even though we know that it's creating something that's unnecessary for the listener we still do it this way. We must ask ourselves why that is. Well perhaps we're just not truly looking at it from their point of view and reaching it in a way that we can genuinely enter the receivers mind and be respectful enough so that we may start the dialogue and see how we can 'assist' them as oppose to 'sell' to them.
So if you truly seek to get rid of your own anxiety before picking up the telephone, you should be able to remove their anxiety about talking to you. These are five important principles that will allow you execute this:

1. BE A SELECTIVE VOLUNTEER:
You must consciously choose to come from a position of being a "Selective Volunteer"- Why are you talking to this prospect? Simply to 'close' someone or to build a connection and bond that's very strong that they'll feel comfortable buying from you. Furthermore, it is you, the salesperson who is choosing to talk to them. So it is as much your option to work with them as it is theirs to work with you. Thus if you call and feel that this prospect is a fit for your organization and you act accordingly, that's absolutely fine, but if they are not a fit, that is ok too. The truth of the type of bond you might be able to create is far more important than closing someone. This would once again be the same for talking to somebody face to face. If you feel the connection isn't there, why would you ask for another appointment or time to chat? If you cannot assist them then you ought to feel okay with leaving. That is what a critical volunteer's frame of mind should be.

2. BREATH:
We frequently find in our calling process that in an attempt to make your way into the prospect's space and out as quick as possible we will frequently deliver our speech as quickly as possible. Nonetheless we all know that as soon as you talk more rapidly, the stress on the listener builds and they start to feel cornered. So any conversation that is made should be natural and void of tonality or subtle pressure that might let the listener know that YOU"RE uncomfortable or tensed about what you have to say. And the greatest way to be confident is to convey your words in a slow and steady manner. Yet when we put so much pressure on ourselves to perform how one can achieve such a level of comfort? The answer is to TAKE A DEEP BREATH. Breathe easily while making the call and take a few deep slow breaths prior to the call that will slow you down and take that pressure off your mind and your heart.

3. MISTAKES AREOKAY:
If you are too conscious of how you come across and too self-conscious to the extent that your concern regarding your performance is affecting your performance, well maybe you have to cut yourself some slack. It is the illusion that we should all be perfect initiates creates more anxiety and pressure on both us and the client. So by showing to them that we're humble and comfortable with having errors and being truly human, we come across as far more responsibility and somebody who is just here to help. Go comfortable with errors, because it's those that display your true meekness and your willingness to attempt- Qualities that are admired and looked upon well by everyone.

4. PRACTICE PURPOSEFUL TOLERANCE:
When you last bought something did you buy it when you were prepared or when you were asked to? We all understand in our minds and hearts that no one wants to be 'sold' on something. We want to make the conscious decision that what we are going to do is the best thing for us at that time. Nonetheless we fail to remember this when we are selling and have very unrealistic expectations of the timing of when a customer might seal a transaction. We offer, we follow up, then we get irritated when we don't hear from them for 2 or 3 weeks, and it takes perhaps even months for them to decide. We somehow feel if they have heard about the product or service they ought to naturally desire to purchase instantly! Certainly they would! Nevertheless we never ask ourselves and step back, "Is this the something that they truly want to look at right now?" if it isn't then if and when they buy should be totally up to them and we should be happy to purposefully show our willingness to be patient and show them that we know they will come to US when they're ready, not before.

5. KEEP A LANGUAGING DIARY:
Those familiar with Unlock The Game's selling approach by Ari Galper will be very much conscious of the importance of language over the phone call and how the selection of certain words and phrases can have on a phone call's success. Anything creates tension or seems manipulative or controlling will break that relation that you've got with a prospect who doesn't like to be lead by someone. Therefore you must keep a notebook or diary of important expressions or phrases that take out that pressure on the call and create comfort for the receiver. Calling and asking asking whether people would be ready to heed your advice though a phrase like "would you be open to …." Would get you much further than just dumping a pitch on an unsuspecting person. For more potent phases and ways to remove the pressure out of your language read take a look at Ari Galper's material and see how it could work for you.

Cold Calling is merely one process to connect with another human being and with this frame of mind your tension will be gone because you understand in your own that you are coming from a position of humility and assisting others. You don't know if you are a fit until you have truly created that feeling of strong trust, so at all times concentrate on THEM, not on pushing the SALE.

Ari Galper, founder of Unlock The Game, makes cold calling painless and simple. Learn his free cold calling secrets even the sales gurus don't know. To receive your 10 free audio mini-lessons visit www.UnlockTheGame.com