For young companies looking to grow their business, the most important thing they should know is that there is a process for winning sales and building sales teams, and it starts with mindset.

Putting mindset before process is what we call the Achievement Model. The Achievement Model establishes that, with the right mindset, almost any set of processes aimed at developing new business will work.

Create Long-term Relationships by Enrolling Clients

So how do you develop the right mindset that will help you win sales? Think in terms of enrolling clients, as opposed to closing deals. When you have the enrolling mindset, you are acting as their partner instead of their vendor. You are providing value because you understand their larger outcomes (their ultimate or ends needs), rather than just their immediate problem (the means to the end). By contrast, if you close the deal, you close the door on future opportunities.

The enrolling mindset allows you to differentiate your company in a very meaningful and personal way. Once you’ve discovered the prospect’s ends needs, you will be able to demonstrate that you have a solution that matches – or that you don’t. People will always respect you for seeing the issue from their side of the table, even if it means you won’t get the sale this time. If the opportunity isn’t there this time, you will have built trust for next time. And when you do have a solution that helps them toward their ends needs, your enrolling mindset will turn the potential one-off prospect into a long-term client.

Build Winning Teams by Enrolling Salespeople

The Achievement Model works for building sales teams, as well. That’s because hiring salespeople works exactly the same way as selling prospects. Only, when you are trying to attract talent, they are selling you as much as you are selling them. Why is it important that you sell them on you? Given the high cost of turnover, you want to hire people who have bought in to your company’s vision, who are not simply temporary. Likewise, you want to understand what they really need, so that you determine whether you can give them the opportunities to be successful over the long term.

The Process of Peeling the Onion

Let’s say you have the enrolling mindset. How do you go about discovering the ends need?

We refer to the process of discovering the ends need as “peeling the onion.” Peeling the onion is the ability to ask probing business questions that peel back the layers of what others first say they need, down to what they actually need, and why.

For example, let’s say you work for a computer hardware company. Your prospect tells you that he needs a new server because his old one is off-lease and at the end of its shelf life. While you might be tempted to pull out a quote for a new server, instead you take the time to ask a series of questions about the business and the ultimate goals of the business owner. You discover that several aspects of his core business functions run on an ASP model (he manages customer data, inventory and bookkeeping online), and he has been thinking about taking his company virtual, so that he can be home when his kids come home from school. Having peeled the onion, you can make a recommendation that he should not buy a new server from you. Instead, he should consider a hosted solution for all of his applications, eliminating the need for a server. If your company offers the hosted solution, so much the better for you. But if not, he will certainly welcome your call next time you have hardware recommendations.

Peeling the onion works in team-building as well. In our company, a major factor in hiring salespeople is how well candidates try to discover our ends needs. More than anything else, we want to see their ability to question. Do they go into rote presentation mode, or do they use the Socratic method to discover the deeper forces driving us, of which possibly we were not even aware? Do they accept what we say we want, or do they keep probing?

Life is Sales

In life, we trust those who can demonstrate that they understand what we need, and why. If they can make a good case for why they can help us reach it, we know we have a fit. Your prospects and your potential sales hires are no different. Develop an enrolling mindset, and back it with a process for discovering ends needs, and you will position your company for long-term, sustainable growth.

Be Your BEST,

Joe

Studies show that sales people on average stay at their jobs for approximately 21 months.

Studies also say that if you hire 10 sales people, it is likely 6 will be gone in the first 12 months.

So how do you mitigate your downside risk?

Selections Tests: YES (Predictive Index, Myers Briggs)

Better Interviewing: YES (See below)

One of the most common “asks” for help we get at entreQuest is what do you ask in an interview.  What are the questions?  What do you look for?  How do you know?

These are all GREAT questions with unfortunately not easy answers.  Leaving out what are the attributes of the best sales people and selection testing, below is a simple list of questions we have seen work pretty well.

1. What should we expect of you in your new role?

2. Tell me about a failure and what you learned from it.

3. What motivates you? How do you motivate yourself?

4. What do you feel are the appropriate steps to selling something?

5. Do you read? What was the last book you read? Why did you select it? What did you learn and apply from that reading?

6. Have you ever been given any formalized training? Attended seminars?

7. What would be most important to you about your new working environment? What type of support would you need?

8. What recommendations would you give us to best work with you in supporting you to do and be your best?

9. Tell me about a time when you received constructive feedback, and then made changes as a result?

I am POSITIVE there are more… in fact, please share your favorite interview questions and stories.

The SOURCE for Sales Growth,

Joe

When you can recognize the difference, you can turn one-off relationships into long-term clients and trusted advisors…

What people think they want vs what they need, right?

How could we possibly presume to know what our clients need, even above what they think they need and what they say they need?

We know because we ask – and we listen – DUH!

There are means needs and there are ends needs. Means needs surface in companies as problems that need to be solved. These problems can be either tactical or strategic, but if you’re focused on solving means needs, you’ll find yourself “closing deals” rather than “enrolling clients.”

If you go into your prospect’s office and accept what he or she has represented to be “the problem,” and you close the deal by solving the problem, then the door closes behind you when you leave. You’re going to have to open it again to get the next deal done, and that’s if someone else doesn’t get there before you to ask, “What’s next?” See, in this situation, with this mindset, your solution was a means to an end (or a step toward an outcome) of which you may not have even been aware.

Again, means needs are about solving tactical and strategic problems. Ends needs are about helping organizations achieve their missions and reach their goals. Now which would you rather your solution be associated with? The ends need, of course. And so would the client.

People are much more emotionally connected to their ends need (mission and goals) than their means need (the immediate problem) – and much more connected to you when you are helping them reach their ends need and achieve their outcomes. Demonstrate to them that you understand their outcome and provide a solution that helps them reach it, and you’re a partner. Close them on the first problem they were willing to reveal and you’re a vendor.

The first need that a prospect reveals is almost always a means need and hardly ever the only need for three reasons:

1. The prospect doesn’t know what the ends need is.

2. The prospect is not ready to reveal the ends need b/c you have not built enough trust.

3. You have not asked the right questions.

Your mission is to find out what the prospect really needs versus what he or she thinks and says the need is. Your mission is to discover the need and help the prospect achieve the mission. Your goal is to help the prospect achieve his or her goals.

Are you ready to Revolutionize Your Sales?

Joe