Kahle Way B2B Sales Blog

by Dave Kahle
A. Welcome to the bane of 21st Century sales people – Voice Mail! Yes, I have a number of ideas.

1. Give up thinking that there is a fool-proof magic set of words that are guaranteed to work. Nothing you do is going to be guaranteed, nor will any set of words work with everyone. You are going to have to steel yourself for a long-term frustrating experience, where success is defined as a few more returned calls this week than you got last week. It’s going to be a constantly moving, never-ending challenge.

2. Compare notes. Get together with your colleagues and brainstorm this question. What has worked for someone? Anyone have any success stories to share? Sometimes a word or story from someone else will generate a successful idea for you. A small group of sales people, working together, may be able to generate some ideas that will work for you and them.

3. Always remember WIIFM – “What’s in it for me?” Put yourself in the shoes of the person you are trying to call and ask yourself why they (you) should return the call. What’s in it for them? I know why you want them to return the call, but when looked at from the prospective of your customer, why should he/she devote five or ten minutes of valuable time to a phone conversation with someone he doesn’t know?

4. Don’t try to sell your product over voice mail, instead sell the return call. Your position should be that you are not trying to sell him anything; you just want to talk with him. At this point, the issue isn’t the price or product; it is the time it takes to talk with you. Give him a reason to talk to you.

5. The most powerful voice mail messages typically do one of these things:

a. reference a person you both know, perhaps someone who referred him to you.
b. reference a company that he knows for whom you have done some good things
c. mention a problem he is likely to have, for which you may have some ideas.
d. mention a specific benefit that would likely be important to him that he would gain from talking to you

6. Study your results. Keep good records, and constantly review your experience in order to learn from it. You may discover, for example, that you have a better chance of reaching CEOs if you call at 7:45 in the morning, rather than at 8:30. Or that a certain phrase or question works better than another.

Hope this helps. You have identified one of the top challenges for every sales person in the 21st century. There are no simple answers, only slight improvements. If you are really serious about improving in this skill, I have two resources to recommend. Check out my one-hour training audio training seminar entitled:
Victory over Voice Mail. If you have a group of sales people frustrated by the same problem, consider my small – group video training program by the same title. 
Good luck.

by Dave Kahle

Every now and then, I run across an idea which makes a significant impact on me. One such was the idea (I wish I could remember who first said it) that the surest indicator of success was the ability to deal effectively with adversity.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the power and truth in that idea. The world is full of talented and intelligent people who never really succeed. But the surest indicator of success is not latent talent, natural abilities or native intelligence. It is, instead, the ability to get knocked down by life, and get up and go at it again.

This is particularly true for sales people. We typically fail more times than we succeed. It’s the rare sales person, for example, who sells more than 50 percent of the prospects. So failure is a regular part of our jobs. As is rejection and adversity of all kinds. Every “No” is a rejection. Every voice mail message is an obstacle.

Our days, weeks, years and careers are spilling over with failure, rejection and adversity.

The lesser sales people become burdened and lethargic with the weight of it, while the stars shrug it off and rise to try again.

It’s not that the sales superstars have less failure and adversity to deal with (although they may), it is that they recognize they need to manage themselves in light of the inevitable failure with which they must contend. They recognize the issue, and deal with it head-on.

In his great book. Learned Optimism, Dr. Martin Seligman describes the mechanics at work. When faced with adversity, some people give up and retreat into an attitude of “helplessness and hopelessness.” Others take control of their minds, and choose to think optimistic thoughts. As a result, they create more energy and more motivation. That energy and motivation channel themselves into more positive behavior, and that positive behavior brings better results.

Notice that this process starts with their thoughts. I have long thought that the ultimate playing field for the professional sales person (or any person, for that matter) resides within – inside the mind where one’s thoughts, emotions and beliefs are generated. Because it is those things that stimulate and influence behavior, and positive behavior produces positive results.

The best sales people have an understanding of this, recognize that their primary obstacles are internal, and develop disciplines and practices to overcome negative thoughts that emerge from adversity and replace them with positive thoughts.

Some of the techniques that superstars employ to help them overcome adversity include visualization, the use of positive affirmations, prayer, and learned optimism.

To learn more about this best practice,

• read Chapter 13 of How to Excel at Distributor Sales
• read Chapter 16 of Take Your Sales Performance Up-a-Notch
• listen to The Best Of Dave Kahle Phone Seminar#24

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For Sales Managers…

Comments: ___________________________________________________________

To help a sales person build this practice into a habit,

a. Share your assessment with them.
b. Talk about how that impacts their performance.
c. Refer them to one or more of the resources listed above.
d. Ask them to commit to a couple of specific changes.
e. Monitor their progress at a future, pre-determined date.

At a sales meeting, ask people to share one time in their lives when they overcame some adversity. It could be something small, like a bad experience at an account that they were able to turn around, or something much deeper, like overcoming a serious illness. If you ask them to prepare this beforehand, you’ll see much better responses. Use the stories as a means to build into people the concept of achieving success by overcoming adversity.

Excerpted from Chapter 13 of Take Your Performance Up a Notch
by Dave Kahle
They don’t always say yes! That might be the very first thing you learn as a sales person. As a matter of fact, “No” in all its various forms and expressions, may be the one word that sales people hear most commonly. Amazing, then, that so few of us are equipped to effectively handle it. 

I teach a two-step process: First you finesse the person, then you handle the idea expressed by that person. Here’s the first part of that. Every sales person should become adept with this simple process I call “Finessing the person.”

What do you do when the customer says “no”?

Step One. Empathize.
Begin by empathizing with your customer. That takes some of the tension out of the situation, defuses any defensiveness on his part, and builds a positive atmosphere. Empathizing requires you to do two things. First, make a statement indicating that you understand how the prospect thinks or feels. Second, support that statement with some proof.

Here’s an example. Let’s say your prospect has said, “I want to think it over.” You respond by empathizing. You say, “I know how you feel,” (that’s your empathizing statement). ”Many of my other customers responded the same way when they were first presented with this concept,” (that’s your proof). Your proof is the reason they should believe that you really do understand how they think or feel.

Another example: Again, the prospect has said, “I want to think it over.” You don’t argue with him, you don’t confront him, you don’t sulk. Instead, you say, “I can understand that.” (That’s your empathizing statement.) “When I first saw it, I wanted to think about it a bit as well.” (That’s your proof – the reason you give the prospect to believe your empathizing statement.)

When you do this – empathize with the customer – it takes the tension out of the situation, and puts you squarely on the customer’s side. Now, you can move on to the next step.

Step Two. Probe. 
Once you’ve empathized with your customer, then ask questions. Generally, when you’re responding to an objection or evasion, the issue is too general to deal with effectively. Often your customer hasn’t accurately articulated the thoughts in his own mind. Your questions, therefore, should be of the type that requires your customer to think more specifically. You must take his answer from the vague and general to the specific. You can’t respond to a vague comment, but you can respond to a specific one. The primary tool for moving your prospect from general to specific thoughts is a good question.

Back to our example. After you’ve empathized, next ask, “When you say that you want to think about it, what specifically is it that you need to consider more deeply?”

Notice the question asks the prospect to think more specifically — to move from the general to the specific. When you phrase these questions, add the words “specifically” or “exactly” somewhere in the question and make it as non-threatening and open-ended as possible. Your tone of voice should be inquisitive, not confrontational.

If you have done this well, your prospect will talk a bit, and share more specifically what he/she is thinking or feeling. That’s good. Now you have some better information with which to deal.

Step Three. Verify.
When he answers, you then rephrase the answer and feed it back to him, confirming that it really is the way he thinks or feels. Back to the example. Let’s say he says, “Well, John, I’m not sure about the price. It’s more than we had planned in the budget. I’m not sure we want to pay that much.” That would be a great answer, because it reveals the specific issue that is bothering the prospect.

Your skillful empathizing and questioning has uncovered the real problem. Now, you just rephrase it and ask for him to confirm what you’ve said. Your response could go like this. ”OK. So, in other words, you’re concerned about how you can pay for it when it’s more than what you had budgeted. Is that right?” He says, “Yes, that’s right.”

When your prospect confirms it, you have successfully probed and clarified his evasion or objection to the point where you’ve moved from the general to the specific. Now, you can deal with it.

As long as he maintains that he “just wants to think about it,” there is little you can do to move the project forward. But now that you understand exactly what the issue is, you can respond to the objection.

Notice also the very last thing that has happened in this exchange. He said “Yes.” You have changed the emotional environment from tense, negative and confrontational, to relaxed, positive and collaborative.

That’s why you do it. You finesse the person before you deal with the idea that person has expressed. Now that you have influenced the atmosphere and clarified the objection, you can respond to the idea.

To get some practice at this, check out the audio training seminar, Handling Objections – Part I and Part II at http://www.davekahle.com/bestof/topics.new.html, and the small group video training program, Handling Objections Without Jeopardizing the Relationship at http://www.davekahle.com/handle.html.

By Dave Kahle
In the last 12 months, only one out of every 20 sales people have spent $25.00 or more on their own improvement! Incredible. Let me repeat it to make sure you read it correctly: In the last 12 months, only one out of every 20 sales people have spent $25.00 or more on their own improvement! That’s my conclusion, based on lots of anecdotal evidence collected over the past 25 years of working with sales people.

I am embarrassed by that. Only five percent of my colleagues are sufficiently dedicated to their own personal growth and professional success that they will invest their own money in their careers. That means that ninety-five percent are not sufficiently motivated to take their own personal development seriously. What a shame.

I am convinced that the process of continuously improving – not only professionally in the core competencies of a professional sales person, but also personally as well – is the ultimate success skill for our time.

The ability to learn and grow in a proactive and disciplined way is several things:

A method to do better at your job. Good sales people sell more than mediocre sales people. Good sales people make more money, enjoy more success and greater status than mediocre sales people. Good sales people work at becoming better.

A way to distinguish yourself from the masses. Remember, ninety-five percent of your competitors and colleagues don’t care enough to invest in themselves. When you do that, you eventually separate yourself from the pack.

A minimal requirement for your employer. I often tell my clients that every sales person (and every employee, for that matter) has two jobs: a. his job, and

b. continually improving himself. If someone is not interested in improving his skills, I don’t want him working for me, or for my clients.

An ethical imperative. It is, I believe, immoral to not improve yourself. Your employer has hired you not just for what you know and what you can do, but for your potential to know more and do more. When you refuse to improve yourself, you rob your employer of some of the reasons he pays you. That, to me, is immoral. The same is true for your family, friends and people with whom you have some influence. You owe it to them to become the best that you can become.

A necessary process that inevitably leads to spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is, of course, “growth.” Growth requires positive change and transformation. Thus, the ability to grow and change in a dedicated and disciplined way is a requirement for serious spiritual growth. Additionally, a serious student of personal improvement inevitably moves from focus on tactical issues to deeper, more spiritual, issues. See my article on “Layers of depth.”

That’s a lot of value wrapped up in a single, fundamental process. You can see why I believe that the ability to learn in a focused, systematic way is the ultimate competency — the foundational skill that, if mastered, will eventually lead you to success.

I call this — the ultimate self-improvement skill for turbulent times and beyond — “self-directed learning.”

When you hear the word learning you’re probably reminded of your days in school, or perhaps seminars and company-sponsored training programs come to mind. While these are all means of facilitating learning, they don’t capture the essence of the ultimate success skill.

Self-directed learning is the ability of individuals to absorb new information and to change their behavior in positive ways in response. The key is behavior change. Learning without action is impotent. Knowledge that doesn’t result in changed action is of little value. Constantly changing your behavior in positive ways is the only reasonable response to a constantly changing world.

For example, let’s say that you’ve read my book, Question Your Way to Sales Success. That’s a necessary first step. But, it’s one thing to read and understand the material in the book, and it’s another to actually use it. It’s nice that you understand it, and it’s good that you think it may help you. But that particular piece of information is worthless until you actually start using it. When you change your behavior and incorporate those ideas into what you do, then you will have learned. Everything else – the reading, understanding, and mental processing that came first – is necessary but not sufficient. They, by themselves, fall short of the goal. It is not until you actually do that new thing – ask questions more effectively, that you will have learned.

Self-directed learning differs from the traditional approaches to training because it requires you to assume complete responsibility for your own behavior change. The stimulus for the learning must come from within you. You must develop your own learning program to expose yourself to new information and to change your behavior appropriately.

In every direction to which you look, you’re faced with rapid changes. And these changes require you, if you’re going to stay competitive, to learn and change at a rate never before required of you.

I firmly believe that the ability to take charge of your own learning, to consistently expose yourself to new information, and then to systematically change your behavior in positive ways based on that new information is the ultimate success skill for the Information Age.

If you can master self-directed learning, you’ll eventually master everything else that you need to be successful.

Prerequisites to Mastering Self-Directed Learning

Proficiency at the ultimate self-improvement skill demands some fundamental attitudes on your part. I like to characterize those attitudes as being a “seeker.”

A seeker attitude is composed of several parts. First, you must have an attitude of proactive responsibility for your situation. In other words, you must believe that your actions have consequences and that to change the consequences, you must change your actions.

This sounds so fundamental as to be ludicrous, yet it seems to be a concept that is foreign to much of the world’s population. Most people tend to blame their problems on forces outside themselves. Your parents didn’t raise you correctly, your spouse doesn’t understand you, your boss doesn’t like you, your customers don’t respect you, the stars are aligned against you, etc. As long as you remain, in your mind, the victim of someone else or some outside force, you have no responsibility to change your own behavior. After all, your situation isn’t your fault.

That’s exactly the wrong attitude. If you are going to be successful, you’ll need to begin with the conviction that your actions have consequences, and that you can change your future. Once you get that, then you are ready to discover what actions will have the greatest impact on your success. 

So, you must accept the responsibility for your own behavior as well as for the consequence of that behavior. As one of my clients said to me, “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.”

That’s common sense. But think about the implications of that statement. If you want different results, you must do something differently in order to get them. The emphasis is on do. The responsibility is yours.

Next, sales people with a seeker attitude need to be open to new information. One of the sure harbingers of pending failure is the attitude that you know it all. Sales people who continue to improve themselves understand that they will never have all the answers. There is always something new to learn. They become like magnets, constantly attracting new ideas, new perspectives, and new information to themselves.

Finally, a seeker has the ability to follow through on his plans. You must have the ability to act on decisions you make, and to become a creature whose actions arise out of conscious thought rather than unconscious habit. In other words, you must have the strength to decide to do something and then to follow through with that decision and actually do it.

From time to time, people ask me about the characteristics of my clients. They’re expecting me to answer with the size of various companies, or how many sales people they have, or the product lines they serve. They’re always surprised when I answer that my clients are not defined by size or products.

Rather, they are defined by the personality of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). All of my clients have CEOs who are open minded, interested in outside perspectives, willing to learn, and committed to the growth of their businesses. The sales people who attend my seminars can be described with the same terms. They’re seekers.

It’s interesting that this description only applies to a small percentage of the population. It probably describes you, or you wouldn’t be reading this Ezine. Take heart in that. In a rapidly-changing world, the competent, self-directed learners will end up on top. The fact that you’re probably one of them means that you’re already separating yourself from the mass of distributor sales people who are more interested in maintaining the status quo.

Richard Gaylord Briley, in his book Everything I Needed to Know About Success I Learned in the Bible, talks about the five percent principle. You’re familiar with the Pareto Principle — the 80/20 rule. Applied to sales, the principle says that 20 percent of your customers provide 80 percent of your business, and that 20 percent of the sales people capture 80 percent of the business. Briley’s five percent rule is similar. It holds that five percent of the individuals in the world provide success and opportunity for 50 percent of the rest of the population. Applied to sales, the Briley rule would hold that five percent of the sales people in the world contribute 50 percent of the volume.

I believe that these five percenters are active, self-directed learners who maintain the seeker attitude I’ve described. And I believe that you have the potential to be a five-percenter for the rest of your life. The starting point is the cultivation of the seeker attitude.

Given this set of attitudes, you can begin to master the procedures and disciplines that will characterize you as a self-directed learner and equip you to be successful in our turbulent times.

Core Strategies for Self-Directed Learning

If you have the right attitude, you’ll find the following two strategies to be powerful ways to practice self-directed learning.

1. Inject yourself into learning opportunities.

There are two parts to the learning equation. The first is to constantly expose yourself to new information, and the second is to change your behavior in positive ways based on that information.

For example, reading this Ezine is a way to expose yourself to new information. So is reading a book, listening to a podcast or CD, attending a seminar, etc. That’s the first half of the process. If you now make changes in what you do as a result of it, you’ve accomplished the second half.

The second part rarely happens unless the first part precedes it. So, to put the whole process into motion, you must regularly expose yourself to new information. To do that, you must inject yourself into learning opportunities. 

You’re thinking, “What’s a learning opportunity?” It’s any event or situation that causes you to face some new information, or that stimulates you to reformat information you already have.

Here are a number of ways to inject yourself into learning opportunities that will help you continuously improve.

Read books, magazines and newsletters. I’m often asked to recommend a book for a new sales person to read. I usually respond by suggesting that, after they have read all of my books, the inquirer go to the library and check out anything that looks interesting. While clearly my books are the best ever written, if your attitude is right, you can learn from anything. So, in one sense, it doesn’t make any difference what you expose yourself to, as long as you expose yourself to something.

Reading any book is better than reading no book. With the proliferation of business books available these days, you can go to the local bookstore or library every couple of weeks and find new books to read. Almost any book you can find will give you new ideas or, at the least, new ways of reformulating things you already know in more useful and practical ways.

In addition to reading books regularly, subscribe to one or more of the sales magazines or newsletters. They make a point of discussing the latest thoughts and presenting contemporary sales situations. There are a number of good magazines and newsletters available.

Make use of podcasts and CDs on sales techniques. These media have the advantage of allowing you to put drive time to good use. Just pop a CD into the player between calls, and you’ll be amazed at how many good ideas you can get.

Many of my clients have created lending libraries of CDs. The company owns dozens of programs, and sales people check them out one at a time, and return them when they’re done. You’ll find lots of these kinds of resources on my web site: www.davekahle.com. Listening to CDs and podcasts such as this is a way of continually exposing yourself to a powerful body of new information

Attend seminars and workshops. Seminars and workshops provide you an opportunity to meet with other sales people and see things from a different point of view — not to mention the material and ideas you garner from the seminar leader.

In some locations, you may have the opportunity to join a learning group. We have organized and facilitated a number of these locally. We bring a dozen or so sales people or CEOs together for a two-hour meeting in which we discuss an aspect of sales in detail. The idea is to learn from one another by engaging in a focused, facilitated discussion group.

Make use of DVDs and online learning programs. Our economy is awash with programs of all kinds. In an hour’s concentrated work, you could probably identify thousands of possible DVDs, CDs and online programs. Visit our web-site for an updated listing of our materials.

Whether you use our materials or someone else’s, the important thing is that you use something!

Add these technique and personal self-improvement learning situations to your normal product learning opportunities, and you get an idea of the kind of learning commitment you need to make in order to seriously and continually transform yourself.

Remember that it’s not enough to go to a seminar once a year, or read a book every now and then. Learning should be a regular part of your work week. I’d like to see you do something to exposure yourself to new ideas every week.

Reflect on your failures. You’re probably thinking, “Where did that come from?” I have learned that my failures, both as a sales person and in my life in general, have provided me with my most intensive learning experiences. In fact, I remember all my failures far more vividly than I remember any of my successes. As I thought about each one of them, I discovered what I had done to produce that failure, and I made specific decisions to change to prevent them from happening again.

Personally, I think that this practice has been one of the key reasons for the success that I have enjoyed as a sales person. You can do the same thing. You are going to fail from time to time. Everyone does. The most important part of failing is taking the time to reflect on the failure and to learn from it.

Be sensitive to all your failures, large or small, and take the time to reflect on them. You’ll find them to be potent learning experiences.

2. Question everything.

There are two big obstacles to learning that are especially typical of sales people. The first is “stuck in a rut” behavior. The second is the tendency to over-rely on assumptions. The cure for both is the same: to question everything.

Stuck in a rut behavior evolves out of an attitude that you already know enough. If you’re content and smug about your current situation, you’re not going to be open to new information. This satisfaction hinders learning because it hampers the motivation to learn. Without the motivation to expose yourself to new information and seriously consider changing your behavior, the necessary changes won’t happen. You’re stuck in the status quo — oblivious to the need to move out of it.

One of the best ways to pry yourself out of a rut is to begin to ask yourself questions. Question everything you do. Is this the best way to present this product? Should you be calling on this customer once a week? Are you presenting the right solutions? Do you really know your customers as well as you should?

Got the idea? The starting point for getting out of the rut behavior is to prod yourself via pointed questions.

The other major obstacle to learning is the tendency to do your job based on unchallenged assumptions. This occurs when you operate on the basis of an assumption that you’ve never really thought about. For example, you assume that two or three competitors are quoting the same piece of business you are, so you discount deeply. Or, you assume that your customers always know exactly what they want, so you don’t take the time to question them.

Because you work on an assumption instead of taking the time to verify it, you make decisions that are inappropriate.

The solution is the same as getting out of a rut. Question everything. From time to time, stop and ask yourself what assumptions you’re working on, and then question those assumptions. You’ll often find that your assumptions are in error, and the decisions you made that relied on them were also in error.