In the last issue of this newsletter, I began to describe our new online sales-coaching tool, Plan to Win + Replay the Call. It is a mobile application that allows the sales manager to act as a real-time coach to guide every salesperson through every sales call, using and refining skills learned in Action Selling training.
I explained that the Plan to Win part works like this: Whenever one of your reps completes a plan for a client call, you, the sales manager, get a copy of the plan on your computer or any mobile device. You see the client and the client’s company. You see the “milestone” in your own company’s sales process that the rep has reached with this client. You see the salesperson’s Commitment Objective for the call—the specific action the rep wants the client to agree to take that will move things forward to the next milestone in your sales process. You see the pre-planned questions the salesperson intends to ask to uncover the client’s most critical needs. And you see the salesperson’s strategy for gaining commitment.
It becomes simple for you to guide and advise each of your reps through every sales call.
One of the things our customers learn to appreciate most about the Action Selling system, however, is the action that takes place after the call. In what we call Act 9, Replay the Call, Action Selling insists that after every single sales call, the salesperson must mentally review the interaction with the customer, step by step, to decide what went well and which areas might be improved on future calls.
The idea is to make it a habit to look back over each call to see if you can learn anything that might improve your performance next time. Could you have asked better questions to uncover more critical needs? If you encountered an objection or a stall, could you have handled it more effectively?
If you Replay the Call consistently, your sales skills never stop improving. You just keep getting better. In fact, if it’s continuous improvement you want, the only thing superior to replaying every call you make would be to replay every call with the help of an expert sales coach.
THE ONLY THING BETTER THAN REPLAYING EVERY CALL WOULD BE TO REPLAY EVERY CALL WITH AN EXPERT COACH.
That is exactly what our new mobile tool makes possible. After the sales manager and the rep Plan to Win the sales call, they proceed to Replay the Call. Did the rep go in with the right Commitment Objective? Which questions produced the best information by uncovering critical needs? Which questions need to be refined? And so on.
Just as in the Plan to Win part, the mobile tool is structured to make the replay fast and easy; sales reps mostly just have to plug in quick information to a series of drop-down boxes. But with a good sales coach figuratively looking over the reps’ shoulders, they continuously get better at gleaning useful information out of the replay process.
In other words, salespeople don’t just continuously improve their performance by actively learning from experience. They continuously improve their ability to actively learn.
Kind of elegant, isn’t it?
For information about how to make sales training pay huge dividends, contact Action Selling at (800) 232-3485.
Learn more about the revolutionary coaching opportunities made possible by the new mobile Action Selling tool – Plan to Win + Replay the Call.