hat identify the specific steps needed over two or three years to cap-ture the business.”34
ACTION POINTS➔ Establish the purpose of your call. What do you expect, anticipate, orknow is the reason for the consultative visit? The purpose is whatyou and the customer will agree upon as the reason why you aremeeting;  it  is  normally  agreed  upon  prior  to  the  meeting.  Forexample, the purpose might be to explore ways that we might beable to manage your health care costs more effectively. 
➔ Establish your call objective. What is it that you would like to accom-plish during your visit with the customer? It should be somethingthat  can  be  measured  objectively.  For  example,  identify  at  leastthree  client  problems  and  secure  a  second  meeting  to  explorethese three problems more thoroughly. 
➔ Write out really smart questions before the call. Write out the signif-icant information that you will need in order to explore areas thatyou  might  be  able  to  help  with.  Write  out  questions  that  willprobe into the needs of customers. 
➔ Identify the potential impact to the customer of not solving those needs.If appropriate, don’t forget to ask the customer why it is so impor-tant to address those needs.
SALES TRUTH 18: Skilled  salespeople  do needto plan their sales calls.
5PRINCIPLE
focus onfeedbackand learning
TOP  SALES organizations  provide  salespeoplewith constructive feedback and a healthy learning envi-ronment in which they can grow and develop.
FEEDBACKFeedback  is  a  key  factor  in  a  salesperson’s  develop-ment because consultative sales skills are easy in con-cept, but difficult to execute. Feedback helps the sales-person know which behaviors to change in order todo a better job. In any sales organization, the mostcrucial  position  when  it  comes  to  feedback  is  thefirst-line manager. The manager should see to it that
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salespeople get the coaching they need and that they stay focusedon the customers’ needs. Principle 5 includes several sales traps thatmanagers fall into that adversely affect feedback, and in turn affectsalespeople’s opportunities to develop:
∆ Sales  Trap  19,  “Sales  Skill  Training  Is  Enough  to  Solve
Selling Problems”
∆ Sales Trap 20, “If You Generate Sales Activity, You’ll Close
More Sales”
∆ Sales Trap 21, “Top Performers Are the Best Teachers”
∆ Sales Trap 22, “Sales Managers Are Good Coaches”
Effective feedback uses the same language as the company’s sales-skill training program and also offers an effective sales process forsalespeople to follow. Managers should monitor the sales feedbackand learning process. 
COACHINGCoaching is simple to understand, but difficult to implement. Theresponsibility for developing salespeople and giving feedback usu-ally rests with the first-line manager. Good managers provide feed-back,  using  the  common  language  of  their  company’s  trainingprograms.  But  feedback  alone  is  not  necessarily  effective  when  itcomes to sales-skill-based training programs. 
It is actually very difficult to find companies in which the first-linesales managers effectively coach the verbal behaviors taught in theircompany’s sales-skill-based programs.1 Few companies do a good jobon this, as is discussed in great depth in Sales Trap 22, “Sales ManagersAre Good Coaches.”
Many  companies  struggle  to  get  their  sales  managers  to  spend
time in skill-based coaching sessions with their reps.
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In  defense  of  the  first-line  managers,  there  are  several  reasonswhy they do not find or take the time to coach, some of which arebeyond their control. These reasons include: 
∆ There is a lack of rewards, recognition, and other incentives
that managers can use to develop their salespeople.
∆ Job and time pressures from within the company and with
clients eat away at valuable coaching time. 
∆ The selling models are complicated and don’t make it easyfor managers to coach salespeople or measure their progress.
∆ There are conflicts between what the manager believes worksand what the particular sales training program states works.
∆ Managers  fear  coaching,  either  because  they  don’t  knowhow to do it or because they haven’t been trained to do it.
In the end, unfortunately, it probably comes down to businesspriorities, but it’s unfortunate that many first-line managers havenever even participated in their company’s sales-skill-based train-ing program.2
As one salesperson put it: 
How can my company expect me to develop my skills asquickly and effectively as they want me to—and as I wantto—when my sales manager hasn’t even been throughthe sales skill program we’ve been using for the last twoyears?  How  can  he  begin  to  give  me  feedback  on  theskills I learned? I know the responsibility for my personaldevelopment is primarily mine, but I am jealous of thepeople who work for managers who know the languagein our skill based programs and can offer constructivefeedback to my colleagues in the same language. 
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PERSONAL DEVELOPMENTCompanies that do a good job with feedback and learning place theiremphasis on developing a learning culture along with the sales cul-ture. Such companies take steps to see that both cultures flourish.They  are  committed  to  their  salespeople’s  personal  development.For example, some include “people development” in their managers’annual performance appraisals. A few of the companies that standout from the rest in this area are Motorola, Northwestern Mutual,and Hewlett-Packard. 
Top companies encourage a learning culture by offering finan-cial support for executive education classes, undergraduate degrees,and MBA degrees, and then recognizing educational achievement.Today, most of the Fortune 1000 companies, and many other smallercompanies as well, offer some form of tuition reimbursement. Thebest companies tend to offer more attractive and extensive incen-tives and reimbursements, ranging from monetary reimbursementto  career  opportunities.  This  type  of  commitment  sends  a  mes-sage to the sales force: “We really do care about you and your personaldevelopment!”
*  *  *
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sales trap 19:Sales Skill Training Is Enough to Solve Selling Problems 
It’s  a  partial  truth  to  say  that  sales-skill  training  works  (or  doesn’twork) and that it solves (or doesn’t solve) selling problems. It can, butit doesn’t necessarily, unless the sales skills are reinforced. Research hasshown that if you just send reps to training and don’t reinforce theirskill  training,  they  forget  87  percent  of  what  they  learned  in  thecourse  within  thirty  days.3 Sales-skill  training,  by  itself,  is  not  theanswer to helping salespeople to learn to sell better. Without con-tinued  practice,  feedback,  and  reinforcement  by  first-line  manage-ment (or some other experienced coach), the salesperson is unlikelyto make much of a behavioral change or improvement. 
TRAINING VERSUS REINFORCEMENTHere,  I’m  defining  sales-skill  training  as  a  course,  conducted  in  aclassroom, that discusses sales models or the concepts of the sellingprocess.  This  course  is  often  a  discrete  training  session  held  in  atraining  or  conference  room. What  I  mean  by  practice,  feedback,and reinforcement is face-to-face, real-time practice involving twoor more people in which verbal selling behaviors are applied, sce-narios  are  rehearsed,  and  actual  behaviors  are  modeled  and  cor-rected  appropriately.  Another  word  for  this  is  coaching.  Withoutfeedback and reinforcement, sales reps are unable to translate theirknowledge of the sales models or process into more skilled behav-ior in the sales call. 
A PROCESS, NOT AN EVENTSales-skill training may improve morale and reduce turnover, but byitself it doesn’t produce posttraining improvements in sales results.Many of the organizations that put their salespeople through sales-skill training programs don’t achieve the return on their investment
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that they had hoped for or wanted because they don’t reinforce theprogram afterward. “In most companies, sales training is an event,”says Gilmour Lake, president of Computer Credit, Inc., located inWinston-Salem,  North  Carolina.  “[Instead,]  it  should  be  an  on-going process that is reinforced through coaching.” 
In fact, coaching makes everyone money, from the company, tothe coach, to the salesperson. Knowing and understanding a salestool is one thing; using it effectively is quite a different story. Salesreps need coaching in order to make this transformation. 
POSTCOURSE COACHINGOne approach suggested by Learning International (now Achieve-Global) is to redefine sales training to include postcourse coaching.As Achieve-Global points out, coaching is “an individualized devel-opment process designed to change a salesperson’s behavior to bet-ter  meet  the  organization’s  goals  for  financial  performance  andcustomer satisfaction.” And, Achieve-Global argues, “sales coachingis not done in a classroom, nor by accompanying the salesperson onthe sales call.”4
It’s hard to “walk the talk.” Many sales models are easy to grasp,but hard to execute. Applying those models on the job is time-con-suming, difficult, and usually frustrating. Most salespeople are morewilling to learn the sales models than to demonstrate them. Humannature  dictates  that  acquiring  a  new  skill  that  involves  changingbehavior requires considerable feedback and reinforcement. 
ACTION POINTS➔ Ask  for  feedback. Research  shows  that  if  sales  skill  training  isn’tcoached and reinforced, salespeople forget what they’ve learned.The feedback and reinforcement part of coaching is what drivesthe  return  on  a  company’s  sales  training  investment  because  it’swhat leads to real behavioral change and improvement by the salesstaff. Ask for feedback from your manager, your peers, and your
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friends when you plan and rehearse sales calls. Without feedback,how will you know whether your sales behaviors are as good asthey can be? 
➔ Focus on one behavior at a time. Beginners should focus on one or twobehaviors  and  master  those  before  moving  on  (see  Sales  Trap  8,“Beginners Should Start With Comprehensive Training”).
➔ Support coaching. Behavioral change requires coaching. Companiesshould  do  more  to  support  coaching.  A  good  coach  is  just  asimportant in sales as in sports. 
SALES  TRUTH 19:  Sales  training  doesn’t workwithout reinforcement.
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sales trap 20:If You Generate Sales Activity, You’ll CloseMore Sales
The following sales management scenario is all too common. A salesforce  is  not  achieving  its  performance  targets,  and  neither  is  thecompany. What is the quickest fix? To monitor, inspect, and increasethe sales activity levels of the salespeople. From senior managementdown to first-line management, the mistaken consensus is often thatif sales activity levels are increased, an increase in performance willfollow.  This  belief  is  a  fallacy.  The  conventional  wisdom  may  saythat the way to succeed is to “increase your sales activity,” but sales-people get themselves into a heap of trouble when they don’t dis-tinguish  between  transactional  sales  (single  visit,  low  dollar  value,low risk) and consultative sales (multiple visits, high dollar value). Intransactional  sales,  salespeople  can  increase  their  sales  activity  byscheduling a sufficient number of appointments, making the requirednumber of sales calls, presenting as many proposals as possible, andperforming as many demonstrations as possible.
Salespeople in consultative sales tend to follow the decision pro-cess phases of their customers. In a typical decision process, a cus-tomer normally passes through three phases. In phase 1, the customeris trying to determine if it wants to solve the problem. In phase 2,after the customer deciding to solve the problem, the customer setsabout evaluating the alternative solutions. In phase 3, the customerassesses the risk of the alternative selected in phase 2. 
In consultative sales, it is what you learn from customers abouttheir needs that advances the sale, and that comes from quality, notquantity. (Of course, you do need to make sales calls to sustain life.However, it is a strong emphasis upon sales activity in the consulta-tive sale that we are addressing in this sales trap.)
Increasing  sales  activity  works  only  in  transactional  sales.  Inconsultative  sales,  what  matters  is  not  how  many  customers  the
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salespeople  see  (quantity), but  what  they  say  to  customers  oncethey’re there (quality).
Here’s the familiar scenario. 
Ralph,  a  sales  manager  for  a  leading  telecommunica-tions  company,  was  reviewing  the  third-quarter  per-formance of one of his major account reps. “Meredith,it seems that the last ninety days has been particularlytough. You were only at 62 percent of plan, and you’reonly  at  78  percent  of  plan  year-to-date.   We  need  todecide what to do to help your performance improve.Since we only have ninety days left in the year, we needto do something that will get us immediate results. Weneed you to work harder, Meredith. In other words, weneed you to make more sales calls, deliver more demon-strations, and  write  more  proposals.  These  particularactivities  will  have  to  generate  business  somewhere.With  increased  sales  activity  levels,  Meredith,  some-body will stick orders into your pocket. Therefore, let’sincrease your sales activity levels by 33 percent, and wewill  review  your  progress  against  these  activity  stan-dards at 7:30 a.m. each Friday morning for the rest ofthe  year.  Meredith,  you  can  be  sure  of  one  thing.Things will start to happen.” 
CONSEQUENCES OF THIS SALES TRAPThings will start to happen, all right. Meredith’s performance willprobably go down.  How can someone work harder and have salesdecrease? Because in increasing her activity, she’s only skimming thesurface of her accounts. She’s not learning what her customers need.In the smaller, simpler sale, performance is driven by how many cus-tomers the sales rep visits, but in the consultative sale, performanceis driven by how effective a salesperson is at learning and listening
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once he or she is in front of the customer. Therefore, it can be coun-terproductive  to  primarily  manage  sales  activity  levels  for  larger,complex sales.5
Ted Rubley, former Xerox sales manager and now president of
INYFX, says: 
I recognized something early in my sales managementcareer. There seemed to be a difference between how Imanaged my salespeople who were involved in transac-tional  selling  (small  sales)  compared  to  my  peopleinvolved  in  consultative  selling  (major  accounts).  Insmall sales, I could almost predict that if a rep were mak-ing lots of sales calls, he would have lots of orders, too.This  didn’t  seem  to  hold  true  with  my  major  accountreps,  though.  They  had  only  so  many  accounts  theycould call on. In one sense they couldn’t work harder,they could only work smarter. I discovered I was spend-ing more time with them to help develop effective salesstrategies  and  tactics  and  more  time  with  the  transac-tional reps inspecting activity standard levels. 
SALES ACTIVITY DEFINEDSales  activity  traditionally  has  been  viewed  as  particular  activitiesthat the salesperson needs to perform in order to be successful. 
TRANSACTIONAL SALES. In smaller sales, the following transaction-gener-ating activities will improve sales: 
∆ Scheduling a sufficient number of appointments
∆ Making the required number of sales calls
∆ Presenting as many proposals as possible
∆ Conducting as many demonstrations as possible
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∆ Determining a percentage mix between “new business” callsand “customer care” visits and then managing to that mix 
Sales  activity  can  also  include  seeking  referrals,  sending  directmail to solicit business, following up, and conducting postsale activ-ities. The point is that these activities all work, but they are mosteffective in the smaller, transactional type of sale. For example, salesof  small  insurance  policies,  inexpensive  office  products,  personalpagers, and cellular phones would probably be considered transac-tional  sales.  Measuring  the  number  of  sales  calls,  proposals,  anddemonstrations works well for selling these products. 
CONSULTATIVE  SALES. In  consultative  sales,  the  salesperson  needs  toprobe thoroughly and explore the customer issues, the consequencescaused by these issues, and so forth. This takes time. There is muchmore for the salesperson to know and understand when she or he isworking  with  larger  accounts.  There  are  more  people  to  visit.Multiple decision makers are often involved, and working with eachone is time-consuming. In the consultative sale, it’s about workingsmarter, not harder.6 It’s about learning at a deeper level. When asalesperson  invests  much  of  his  or  her  time  with  larger  accounts(which he or she should do because the performance reward is usu-ally greater), that salesperson doesn’t have as much time left to makelots of sales calls. In the consultative sale, success is about how thesalesperson behaves in front of the customer, not the number of cus-tomers he or she is able to visit. Put another way, in the consulta-tive sale, performance is about depth, i.e., “drilling” down into anaccount. In transactional selling, it is about breadth, i.e., calling ona lot of people. Since the solutions in a transactional sale are usuallynot as complex or are more of a commodity, and since they are alsolow-risk to the customer, only one or maybe two sales calls are nec-essary to get an order. 
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What might happen if a transactional approach were to be usedin the consultative sale? Imagine a salesperson who was used to clos-ing business on the first or second visit trying to close an order for a$1.5 million local area network (LAN) order on the same timetable.No one would ever expect a Fortune 500 company to move its life,health,  and  property  coverages  to  the  company  of  a  sales  rep  whotried to close on the second visit. In such cases, the prospect wouldbe thinking, “How could someone who has learned so little about ourbusiness be able to make an intelligent recommendation to us? Dowe want to do business with someone who doesn’t care enough aboutus to take the time to learn our business?” 
Shelby  Solomon,  vice  president  and  general  manager  for  theMEDSTAT Group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, says, “Of course, wewant our major account people making sales calls, but we want themto be effective sales calls. They need to take the time to thoroughlyunderstand the customers’ needs and identify how they can createvalue for our customers.”
ACTION POINTS➔ Consultative sales require quality. Remember that consultative sell-ing (or major account selling) is about sales effectiveness—in otherwords, how skilled you are when you are in front of the customer.
➔ Transactional sales require quantity. In transactional selling, perfor-mance is primarily driven by getting in front of a lot of customers,since a high skill level is not necessary for sales success. 
SALES  TRUTH  20:  Increased  sales  activity  iseffective only in transactional sales.
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sales trap 21:Top Performers Are the Best Teachers
The idea that top performers are the best teachers is a fallacy. It maybe clear from watching top performers that they’re good. But assum-ing that because they’re good they’ll be able to teach others is a mis-take. It’s actually hard to learn from top performers. Here’s why.
NOT KNOWING WHY THEY’RE GOODWe have found that just because top performers are able to “do it”doesn’t  necessarily  mean  that  they  know  what  it  is  that  they  aredoing  that  makes  them  outstanding.  For  example,  Neil  Rackhamfound that top performers believed that their success came from thecategory of question they asked (grammatical form), when in fact itwas the type of question (purpose) that mattered.7
TEACHING IS DIFFERENT FROM DOINGOne reason why top performers aren’t necessarily good teachers isthat  teaching  requires  a  different  skill  set  from  doing.  When  youteach, you are getting others to change their behavior. In self-man-agement, you are getting yourself to change your behavior. The dif-ference  is  almost  the  same  as  that  between  managing  and  selling.The skill set for success in management is somewhat different fromthe skill set used in selling. This is the reason why top salespeopledon’t  always  make  the  best  sales  managers,  and  top  athletes  don’talways make the best coaches. 
YOU CAN’T JUST WATCH THEMSome people believe that top performers can teach simply by lettingstudents watch them. If a salesperson could improve by watching atop performer, then someone would have filmed a top salesperson,shown the footage to all the beginners in the world, and thus elim-inated the need for corporate sales training, sales coaches, and even
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consultants like me. Verbal skills, such as asking questions, are likephysical skills in sports: You have to practice new behaviors and getfeedback  from  a  coach  in  order  to  know  how  you  are  doing.Coaching will tell you what to continue doing and what to change.Changing physical or verbal behaviors by reading books and watch-ing instructional movies hasn’t worked very well in sports. I don’texpect it will work in sales, either. Athletes know that they improvemost when they practice and get feedback and reinforcement fromtheir coach. 
FIELD RESEARCH WITH TOP PERFORMERSThe  Dartmouth  Group,  Ltd.,  asked  successful  salespeople  fromleading  companies  throughout  the  world  what  they  believed  thekeys to their sales success were and what advice they would pass onto  others.  Their  responses  were  somewhat  varied  but  almost  pre-dictable. Here are some of the more common ones:
∆ Ask  questions,  lots  of  questions,  particularly  open-ended
ones to get the customer talking. 
∆ Be persistent and assertive, but not pushy and aggressive.
∆ Know your product thoroughly and be able to demonstrate
its uniqueness to the customer.
∆ Make lots of sales calls.
∆ Recognize that some people have it and others don’t.
∆ Strong  interpersonal  skills  are  important  in  order  to  be 
successful.
∆ Be honest. The prospect senses it if you’re not.
∆ Listen for customer needs.
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∆ Always be closing.
∆ Objections are your friend; they will often lead to a sale.
This  list  offers  some  interesting  insights.  First,  the  responsesfrom top performers were pretty vague. We weren’t always certainof what they meant because the context wasn’t clear. For example,were there any types of questions within the categories open-endedand closed-ended that were more successful than others? If so, inwhat situations? Should salespeople believe that they are successfulif they are generating lots of objections? Is one type of objection eas-ier  or  more  difficult  to  handle  than  another?  Second,  two  of  theitems on the list, doing lots of closing and generating lots of objec-tions, work better in transactional selling than in consultative sell-ing. (Rackham thoroughly researched this finding and published hisstudy results in SPIN® Selling.) Top performers weren’t always ableto identify the particular conditions under which some sales tech-niques worked better than others. This kind of person would strug-gle as a coach.
SUCCESS FACTORS FOR TOP PERFORMERS
The Dartmouth Group, Ltd., has found that:
∆ Top performers ask significantly more questions than poorto average performers, and they also ask really smart ques-tions.  (See  Sales  Trap  18,  “A  Skilled  Salesperson  Doesn’tNeed to Plan Sales Calls.”) 
∆ Good salespeople try to gather pertinent information as part
of their preparation.8
∆ Top performers make certain that the customers talk morethan they do. They also display concern by seeking and lis-tening more.9
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∆ Top salespeople offer solutions later in the sales cycle, after
they have fully explored the client’s needs.10
∆ Top  performers  place  their  primary  emphasis  on  “under-standing” the customer by asking really good questions.
As you can see, there’s a disparity between what top performerssaid they did and what they actually did. For example, top perform-ers felt that if you could handle objections effectively, you would getsales results. However, the key is to reduce the number of objectionsby  using  effective  probing  techniques.  In  fact,  there  were  fewersales objections in successful sales calls than in unsuccessful calls.11According to Rick Beller, former vice president of channels for Huth-waite,  Inc.,  and  now  with  the  Real  Learning  Company,  “You  canlearn from the best. You can also learn (what not to do) from theworst,  but  in  the  end  you  learn  best  from  those  facilitators  andinstructors who are the most skilled teachers—and the most skilledteachers may not be the best performers.”
ACTION POINTS➔ In teaching, rely more on research and validated studies than on expertopinions. Top performers don’t always know why they’re good, sothey  aren’t  the  best  teachers.  For  example,  in  our  research,  topperformers thought that they should be always closing, whereasin the consultative sale, the more closing techniques are used, theless chance there is for sales call success.12 People who are “stu-dents of selling” but are just par or average performers might bebetter coaches.
➔ Validate the teaching approach. Don’t hesitate to ask any salesperson,sales manager, or sales trainer to validate the teaching approachhe or she is using. You might want to ask questions such as, Howdo you know for sure that what you are suggesting or teaching
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is  correct?  What  was  the  research  methodology  or  researchdatabase  used  for  your  conclusions?  For  a  fuller  discussion  ofcourses and methodologies, see Sales Trap 7, “It’s the Content ofthe Skill Training That Matters Most.”
SALES TRUTH 21: Top performers don’t alwaysknow why they’re the best.
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sales trap 22:Sales Managers Are Good Coaches
Our sales manager is the best coach. As the manager,she’s in the best position to oversee the day-to-day skilldevelopment of all of our salespeople through obser-vation, feedback, and encouragement. 
Does this statement sound familiar? It’s a good representation ofthe common idea that sales managers are good coaches. In point offact, sales managers are rarely good coaches (though it’s through nofault of their own) for the simple reason that they don’t coach.13 Andwithout coaching, salespeople don’t learn what they need to learn inorder to improve.
It’s ironic that most managers don’t coach because almost every-one  agrees  on  what  the  attributes  of  a  good  coach  are,  and  manysales managers have these qualities in spades. Most people describea good coach as being skilled, being supportive, and offering feed-back.14 But  why  don’t  most  people  coach  effectively  if  they  knowwhat a good coach is? 
PEOPLE ASSUME THAT COACHING SHOULD “HAPPEN NATURALLY” Many organizations do not separate coaching from the sales man-agement function and believe that coaching is supposed to arise nat-urally from the manager’s experience.15 Most sales managers becamesales managers because they were top salespeople. And when theycoach, they often want to emphasize the techniques that got themto the top, whether or not those techniques will work in the situa-tion at hand. And the techniques used by sales managers are oftenoutdated. Mike Lockman of The Dartmouth Group says, “Formertop  salespeople  who  are  now  sales  managers  coach  by  mimicking
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how they were managed and coached—more often than not with aheavy, outdated push style.”16 Furthermore, sales coaches who weretop performers often don’t know exactly why they were successful assalespeople, so they can’t effectively impart what they know to oth-ers. (See also Sales Trap 21, “Top Performers Are the Best Teachers.”)You can’t share the secrets of your success if you aren’t quite surewhat  they  are!  Even  when  managers  are  able  to  pass  along  theirknowledge effectively, that knowledge is often outdated and there-fore no longer applicable. 
Many sales managers haven’t even taken their own company’ssales training program, whereas the sales staff have. The reason forthis  is  that  when  a  company  changes  its  basic  skill  training  pro-gram, the sales managers who learned the old program never havetime to take the new one. Management wonders, Why should oursales managers take this course? They don’t need training. Theycan sell. However, while they may not need to take the sales train-ing program to improve their own performance, they need to beable  to  reinforce  their  salespeople  who  have  taken  the  new  pro-gram using the labels and language from that program. Top com-panies have a common language, which is reinforced through train-ing.  Admittedly,  this  can  be  expensive  if  you  continually  changetraining programs.
MANAGERS LACK COACHING SKILLSSales-skill coaching is a specialized skill, different from sales man-agement. Sales managers are often simply not trained by their com-panies to coach selling skills, so they don’