About the author and ZEN Clinical Coaching
Ian Baldrey’s life as a salesman
began before he was out of short trousers when he worked on his
parents’ market stalls selling ornamental brass and ‘anything you
can carry for a pound’. He extended his career as a teenager where
he treated school as just another marketplace. A plethora of sales
jobs later and despite the misspent youth he went back into education
and graduated with a Psychology degree in 2000; however, unlike his
friends who conducted themselves properly with further study and
qualifications in various fields of Psychology, he became devoted to
applying Psychology to his twin loves of selling and the Psychology
of achievement. These studies took him into a career in sports
management, where he became involved in the management of Sports
Professionals, giving him a chance to apply his theories in real
life. This also took his career into an International direction.
Finding that he enjoyed working abroad from his native England, he
has taken positions in various management roles around the globe,
where, as a Sales Manager, aided by some talented people, he was
responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales in
Investment Property, (an area in which he retains a keen global
interest).
Having achieved all his goals actively selling and
enjoying the coaching aspects of sales management, his focus moved to
helping other Sales Professionals to achieve their dreams. This was
when ZEN Clinical Coaching was born. Understanding that success only
results from effective collaboration of dedicated Individuals. As
Principal Consultant Ian brought together an eclectic mix of Business
Professionals and Psychologists to design and create some cutting
edge sales training programs. All of which follow ZEN’s simple
principles that the training approach must be holistic, clinically
proven and personally delivered in a mentoring style. In active
Consultancy, from their base in Sheffield, ZEN coaches work world
wide with corporate clients large and small. Training and coaching
their sales teams, setting up new sales operations or enlivening
existing ones. This book is your chance to access all that knowledge.
It is aimed at anyone involved in the art of selling: “Average Joe
to Perfect Pro” is the culmination of all this shared knowledge and
professional experience, created BY Professionals to create MORE
Professionals. This book is your indispensible guide to successful
selling and becoming the consummate sales professional. The sales
profession is still the only way of making real money, starting with
nothing. Here at ZEN, we can’t promise you happiness, but the
effective application of the success principles here will lead to a
higher level of motivation in your life and ultimately financial
security. Our coaches have already followed this path and are
dedicated to helping you find the way too. It’s our reason to be;
Our ZEN.
ZEN Clinical Coaching – “Securing Success, through Science.”
Welcome to Average Joe!
"This book is dedicated to the memory of my mentor Paul Shanks. A Sales Professional so skilled - it seemed like he did nothing at all."
AVERAGE JOE TO PERFECT PRO
Brought
to you for the first time in print - The complete sales coaching
course by the experts at ZEN Clinical Coaching
“Read inside the
proven ZEN method for transforming any average Sales Person into the
consummate Sales Professional”
Average Joe To Perfect Pro
By Ian Baldrey
Copyright 2011 Ian
Baldrey
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License
Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you
would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an
additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and
did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then
please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you
for respecting the hard work of this author.
“The alchemy of achievement”
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: The Wonderful World Of Sales!
Chapter 3: The Psychology Of Sales
Chapter 4: Prospecting and Preparation
Chapter 5: Warm Up and Control
Chapter 6: The Sales Presentation
Chapter 7: Objection Handling
Chapter 8: Closing
Chapter 9: Advanced Presentation Skills
Chapter 10: Advanced Closing
Chapter 11: Body Language
Chapter 12: Professionalism and Aftersales
Chapter 13: How Sales Operations Typically Work
Chapter 14: Moving Up the Ladder
Chapter 15: The Art of Goal Setting
Chapter 16: Afterword
INTRODUCTION
A very good day to you and a warm welcome to the Zen Personal Sales Coaching Course. Before we get stuck into the course itself, I’m sure you want a bit of information about us and what we do. The clue to what Zen do is in the company name! Zen is a unique training and coaching consultancy made up of Psychologists and Business experts. We specialise in targeted one to one coaching courses for Sales Professionals and executives – but what’s unique about our sales training is that we focus on the Psychological nature of sales. Not just that of the client but the Psychology of the Sales Professional themselves. We coach an individual in our verified mental success techniques as much as in the practical side of selling. We arm our clients with crucial cognitive tools as well as practical methods because the truth is that for the Sales Professional most of the hard work goes on inside their head.
These days most executives are
familiar with popular Psychological practices in the workplace such
as Neuro Linguistic Programming (N.L.P.). This is a type of training
which has its origins in Psycho-therapy and is used in the business
world to effect change in an Individual or organisation. At Zen we
use some of these processes, but we also take things much further. We
commonly train our clients in the relaxation and visualisation
methods used by top sports professionals, body language analysis and
teamwork skills. We teach them our innovative goal setting method and
modern therapy techniques such as mindfulness. We like to think that
we are at the cutting edge of modern training and are very proud of
the results that our coaches achieve with our clients. Now, we are
proud to say that, for the first time we are presenting our Clinical
Coaching Course in book format so that those who can’t get to see
one of our coaches personally can still gain the benefits of Zen’s
insights. It doesn’t matter whether you are new to the sales
profession or a grizzled veteran closer! Without a doubt, we’re
certain that there is something you will find in the course to help
your career to reach new heights. All we ask of you is that you keep
an open mind and be ready to take on a few new concepts. But that’s
enough about us! This course is about you! So let’s get started!
At
this point we need to take a moment to describe how the book is
organised. In order to be as close as possible to our face to face
coaching style, the book is separated into two parts. Part one
reflects the order of a typical sales cycle, whilst part two is
additional information provided to ensure success in your sales
career. Each chapter comprises of the contents of a single hour
session that you would usually receive with one of our coaches. They
are designed to be read initially in the following order:
The
Psychology of Sales
Prospecting and Preparation
Warm up and Control
The Sales Presentation
Objection Handling
Closing
Advanced Sales Presenting
Advanced Closing Methods
Using Body Language and Teamwork
After sales
Being the Sales Professional
How Sales Operations Work
Moving Up the Ladder
The Art of Goal Setting
After
reading through the book once completely, you can then return to
individual chapters at your leisure, whenever you want to brush up on
a topic or you need a gentle nudge of motivation. During the rest of
this introduction we will be hearing a few words from Zen’s founder
and Principal Consultant. We think his words of wisdom contain some
rather unique insights into the sales profession, written in his
distinctive, accessible style. We’re just going to hear from him
now about the sales coaching course:
‘Hi there dear reader - My
name is Ian Baldrey and I am the founder and Principal Consultant of
Zen Clinical Coaching. Before you get stuck into all the good stuff
in the course I wanted to take a moment of your time to explain our
thinking behind the Personal Sales Coaching course. It’s fair to
say, there are many valuable lessons my years working in sales have
taught me, but there are a couple that I really wanted us to focus on
when we re-wrote this holistic sales coaching course into a book. The
first of these (and I think probably the most important lesson) was
something that I personally discovered early on in my sales career:
it was that any success I had in sales was fundamentally governed by
my own frame of mind as much as by any external influences. When
working as a Sales Representative I had to take responsibility and
ensure I was constantly enthused, challenged, positive and focused.
However, I did it find something of a paradox that, although my frame
of mind was incredibly significant to my own sales targets, some of
my employers and Directors didn’t provide any training in this
area. There seemed to be an assumption that because I’d enjoyed a
measure of success in sales, I was therefore fully prepared for the
mental roller coaster ride I was experiencing.
The curious thing about this was that, in my experience this lack of mental preparation and coaching seemed completely at odds with other industries I’d been involved in. For example, good managers of Professional Sports People are meticulous in taking care of their clients every need, so that they can go out there and just concentrate on expressing their talent. However, top sales people are not afforded the same attention and care. This is despite the fact they can also earn their bosses (and companies they work for) vast sums of money. Sales is uniquely self reliant profession! So, years later when I became the coach, I wanted to address this common problem. I was determined that a focus on enabling clients to handle the mental challenges of the sales profession was key. This means that when the other Zen coaches and I work with individuals we always place a heavy emphasis on their personal Psychology. After all you can’t reap a bumper crop from an untilled field, so why should a coach or manager expect someone to be a top closer if they’ve not been trained with the mental tools to do so?
When we decided to write the course
into a book (and reach a wider audience) I was keen to make sure we
retained that emphasis on personal motivational Psychology. The
tricky part was how to do that without actually meeting the reader! I
like to think that after a lot of hard work we’ve managed to keep
that personal element in there. That’s why we include certain parts
of our life coaching courses. Particularly useful in this respect is
the goal setting section, and while it is not essential to you being
a successful Sales Professional, I do believe that it can help to
take you to the next level.
There was another area that we
thought the book should focus on in great detail. This was an attempt
to encourage a greater understanding of the sales department and its
processes within a wider corporate context. With the exception of a
few key examples, when I was working as a sales person I sometimes
felt that my bosses were perhaps holding back a little bit from me.
They were maybe telling me how to do something but not quite
explaining why I was actually doing it. At first I thought it was
because they didn’t have time to teach me, but I came to realise
that it was happening because the sales profession is naturally very
competitive. I learnt that a good Sales Director treats their sales
representatives as their prodigy but a bad one views them with
something approaching suspicion. Even in some cases, they perhaps
view the top performers as a threat to their own positions. Maybe
you’ve had some experience of this protectionism yourself?
With this in mind, we wrote key parts of this book to give our clients the bigger picture. That’s why we include chapters on how a typical sales department might work as well as a section on what your sales manager is looking for from your performance at work. I’m of the opinion that if you don’t have the confidence to teach someone else how to play the game properly then you should just stop playing yourself!
Here at Zen, we want you to be massively successful; after all, we assume that’s why you’ve bought this book. And we want it to be the best value for money purchase you’ve ever made! You know, we would love it if you became the top closer at your company, then a Sales Manager, then a Sales Director, formed your own sales coaching company and tried to put Zen out of business! It would keep us on our toes as a company and keep us innovating. For me, that is what I feel coaching is really about, the expansion of knowledge and the achievement that comes from that growth. The more highly skilled we all are, the more all of society benefits. Well that’s enough from me. I hope you enjoy the course and I’d love to hear any comments you may have for us, so feel free to drop us a line at the email address on our website:
Take care and happy selling!’
****
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF SALES!
A warm welcome to the first chapter in the Zen Personal Sales Coaching Course. Right then, before we start on the course itself, we’d like to take some time to describe just how Zen views the wonderful profession of selling! In this first chapter we will be discussing the popular misconceptions surrounding sales, why sales make the world go round, how a sales professional behaves, and why sales is a game to be won.
Now, (my apologies to the romantics amongst you,) we are of the opinion that it’s not love or money that makes the world go round – It’s Sales! It’s one of the most important professions that we have in society, yet nobody ever learns anything about it at school, and bizarrely, some people even view the profession in a negative way!
But, let’s start at the beginning,
what is the practice of selling and what makes a Sales Person? Well,
let’s answer that by handling a few popular misconceptions about
sales people you may well be familiar with. You may have even been
accused of one or more of these yourself!
Number 1 – A Sales
person is born not made.
Oh no! That’s just not true! Just like
any other profession, an individual can be trained in sales. No-one
is born to be a doctor or a lawyer so why should someone be born to
be a Sales Professional?
Number 2 - Sales people are 'pushy' and
insincere Individuals.
Wrong again! It’s true that very
unprofessional and poor sales people are forceful or disingenuous. A
good, effective sales person has no need to be pushy and it is his
sincerity that makes him so good!
Number 3 - Anyone can sell.
Also
wrong! Whilst it is true that there is an element of sales in every
human interaction, only certain individuals possess the necessary
skills and psychological make up to be a Sales Professional. It takes
talent plus the right training and coaching, if anyone could do it,
they would - for the money!
Number 4 - Only the top few make good
money from sales.
Again not true! Poor sales people are fixated on
‘getting by’ on just their salary. A good Sales Professional
knows he will always command a very high income.
Number 5 - A
sales career is unstable and the income inconsistent.
Nope! In
fact, the professional sales person's skills are so universally
desired by so many businesses that it is actually the most stable
profession there is. Any accomplished sales person is constantly in
demand, fending off job offers and a real Sales Professional has as
much income as they are prepared to accept. There is always work for
a Sales Professional.
You may well have heard of a few others but
enough of this nonsense and let us look at the common theme that runs
through the misconceptions. Any sales person that appears pushy, who
fails to generate a good income, frequently changes employer or
generally fits the Sale-sy stereotype that people claim to be
familiar with, does so for one reason and one reason only: quite
simply they do not treat sales as the PROFESSION that it is! It is
the high level of professionalism that Sales Professionals encourage
that separates the winners from the losers. This level of
professionalism causes you to be successful beyond all else.
Here at Zen we’re happy to say we love the profession of sales and we love Sales Professionals! Why? Well, we believe when you really understand the profession of sales you can't fail but to love it! Put simply, selling is the most important thing the human race does (well, reproduction is obviously more important but we choose not to coach people in that area for obvious reasons!). It is more important than anything that we can construct or any other service we can render. Why? Well, without Sales Professionals to represent the inventors, craftsmen, designers and other vocations’ products and services to consumers, nothing would ever progress. And no service would ever be rendered for money. We would live in a world of unrealised potential, a world where there is no development or advancement. Or even incentive to gain knowledge and give a useful service. Society would regress thousands of years where we would have to go back to swapping chickens for the building of a fence! A simpler existence perhaps; but, human beings have an intrinsic need to improve and advance. That is what makes us unique. And the way we get there is through Sales Professionals who are doing their job!
Think about any invention in history…
Let’s go with Edison’s light bulb. Once he’d invented a working
prototype, you can bet your last dollar that there was a sales person
around who recognised the potential and sold the concept to a big
business for manufacturing. He was there, I promise you. Just as
someone was there selling every other vital invention throughout our
history. So be proud to be one of the people so crucial to society
and be glad to tell everybody you are a sales person! You make the
world go round.
THE TRUE SALES PROFESSIONAL
In order to find
out why the sales profession is so important to society, we need to
ask ourselves,
‘Just what makes a Sales Professional? And how do they behave?’
Well, we’re going to go through a
list of some crucial qualities of the Sales Professional. We’ll go
into far more detail on these in the coaching sessions to follow but
let’s make a start right now! If you like these can be seen as the
rules of the course.
A Sales Professional is ALWAYS ENTHUSIASTIC
particularly about his product or service.
This is true without
exception. Enthusiasm sells!
A Sales Professional ALWAYS acts with
INTEGRITY towards his employer, his customer and just as importantly
his-self.
Or he will soon find himself getting into trouble!
A
Sales Professional is ALWAYS punctual.
Time really is money, you must RESPECT
it.
A Sales Professional is ALWAYS selling.
If you’re not
actively making money then it’s only because you’re preparing to
do so!
A Sales professional takes GREAT INTEREST in people.
A
sale is always made from one person to another person. Or there would
be no need for us at all!
A Sales Professional is ALWAYS
prepared.
Fail in this and that alone will ruin you. The person
that fails to prepare, really prepares to fail.
A Sales
Professional CLOSELY FOLLOWS the sales process.
We’ll say plenty
more about this later in chapter five.
A Sales Professional
RESPECTS his leads.
Without them, you have no-one to sell to!
A
Sales Professional takes CONTROL of his client.
Vital, absolutely
vital, we’ll talk about this more in the chapter Warm Up and
Control.
A Sales professional is ALWAYS closing.
A.B.C: A.
Always. B. Be. C. Closing. We’re going to spend a lot of time
talking about closing later. There are two coaching sessions devoted
to this alone.
A Sales Professional NEVER stops
LEARNING.
A very important and occasionally under-appreciated rule
this. Whether you are the Sales Director of a major multi-national
company, or you write sales training courses for a living or you are
fresh to the Profession you will learn something EVERY SINGLE DAY.
It’s one of the reasons this career is so much fun!
SALES IS A GAME TO BE WON
Well we’re just about done here for now. There is just one more subject we need to talk about right now and that is that SALES is a GAME to be won!
All the top closers understand that sales is a game. A game of fairly high stakes and an important one, but a game nonetheless. Paradoxically, this doesn't mean that there has to be a winner and loser! In fact it is the strangest game there is, because any sales transaction can only be considered really successful if both parties have won. Your job as a Sales Professional is to make sure that you don't both lose! You do this quite simply by ensuring that your presentation results in a sale. In any successful sales transaction your client leaves happy because you have solved the problem he had. Whether he needed a new television and surround system to watch the movies he enjoys, or needed a new car to get him to where he wants to be, providing the item for him at a fair price agreeable to him has solved his problem. A Professional always keeps this fact in mind. So enjoy the game, it's the best in the world! And that dear reader is the end of the beginning...
****
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SALES
A warm welcome to the second chapter in the Zen Personal Sales Coaching Course. In this chapter we are going to address and develop an area which we consider to be the most important area of coaching for any profession, one that is an absolutely critical component for a Sales Professional: the area of your personal Psychology. You know, here at Zen, we can think of no other profession where one’s mood, attitude and state of mind can so directly affect an individual’s income as the Sales Profession. An unhappy engineer might curse at some machinery he’s been working on but it won’t affect his job. A moody doctor might have a bad bedside manner if he’s having a bad day, but he still knows that a certain tablet will help to cure a certain ill. However, sales is quite different as we’ll explain. So, we’ll start off here by talking about Enthusiasm and retaining a positive mental state, move on to riding the sales “roller coaster,” discuss why sales is a numbers game, get started with an introduction to the sales process and finish with some visualisation techniques which will help you to attain a controlled sales environment and boost your confidence.
As a Sales Professional taking control of your mind-set is where you really must be on top of your game, all of the time. The truth is that you can forget some of the product knowledge and still make the sale, you can go past the close and still end up making the sale but if you don’t maintain a positive mental attitude you’re quickly going to find yourself out of a job! To explain why this is, we’re going to jump briefly into the scary place that is the mind of a Sales Director. Now, you tend to find that it is a common policy used by many sales directors to have something of a revolving door policy to recruitment. Why should this be? It’s certainly not because they routinely desire to get rid of their best staff! The reason is actually very simple: a new employee will almost always display a higher level of enthusiasm than you tend to find in a more established member of staff. And the truth is that enthusiasm sells! Now if you’re thinking that this means the writing is on the wall for any sales person who has been at a company sometime, you’d be wrong. It doesn’t have to be the case. The established Sales Professional need not fear for their continued employment. This is because the Professional is aware that his own psychological condition is just as important as that of his clients. He is deliberately mindful of his mental state at all times. The Psychologists at Zen have developed ways to help you to do this.