Unfortunately
sales skills, product and even motivational training,
while important, do not always guarantee good sales
performance. Most salespeople already know how
for example to initiate contact with prospective buyers,
present to groups, ask for referrals, make telephone
calls or close more business from existing customers
– they are often just uncomfortable about doing
so, even if they are otherwise well-motivated.
As a result
they often avoid ‘uncomfortable’
situations where they could generate new or additional
business. This is known as Sales Call Reluctance®
and is extremely common even in experienced salespeople.
We now know that over a third of the typical UK Blue
Chip salesperson’s potential to generate business
is held back due to these reluctances.
The originators
of the SPQ*GOLD® Sales Behavioural Change Process,
George Dudley and Shannon Goodson, have researched behaviours
in salespeople and their managers across over 1100 companies
worldwide over 25 years, finding the problem to be far
more complex and varied than the hackneyed ‘fear
of failure’ explanation. They have so far identified
12 distinct types
of sales reluctance behaviours, all damaging to
a salesperson’s ability not only to initiate new
prospect contact but also to increase sales from current
customers.
They have
constructed a scale specifically to measure these vital
behaviours in salespeople, providing a means of accurately
quantifying what behavioural constraints are being placed
on the business development activities of sales teams.
As a development
tool, the scale results are used in conjunction with
the two-day ‘Sales Behavioural
Change’ Workshop which is uniquely designed
to attack business generation problems at a behavioural
rather than at a skills or knowledge level. It enables
each individual to fully understand their own particular
weaknesses. Specific remedies are then offered to enable
each individual to overcome their own particular areas
of discomfort in customer-facing situations. The workshop
therefore offers the opportunity to limit the damaging
effects of sales reluctance in existing sales teams
in whom a massive investment has already been made.
The net result
is substantially improved levels of business generation
from both new and existing customers. In carefully controlled
and measured trials using mirror-image control groups,
the testing and workshop process on average yields sustained
and incremental sales revenue improvements in UK teams
of over 15%.
SPQ*Gold®
& Sales Development