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Why Champions Aren’t Made in a Day—And Neither Are Great Sales Teams

by Blogs

In sports, the best athletes aren’t winning because they’ve discovered a secret move no one else knows. They win because they’ve put in the work to become more proficient   with the same fundamental skills everyone else has access to. The skills themselves are not rare—but mastery is. 

This truth should shape how we think about sales training. Yet too often, organizations treat sales development as a box to check. They host a workshop, deliver a playbook, run a quick enablement session—and expect lasting results. That’s like putting someone through a weekend basketball clinic and assuming they’ll be ready for the NBA. 

Let’s be clear: one-and-done training doesn’t create champions. 

It creates amateurs. People who saw the landscape, took some notes, maybe tried a few things—but never stayed long enough to develop real skill. They understood the rules, played the game, but stayed at the level of amateurs—good enough to participate, never enough to compete for real stakes. 

And just as dangerous is the constant search for “new” techniques. While experimentation can be useful, experimenting is not the same as executing with excellence. Trying out different methods without a foundation is like a golfer swapping clubs every hole while still figuring out how to grip the club properly. They’re not innovating—they’re guessing. 

The core skills of selling haven’t changed. Asking the right questions. Uncovering business pain. Connecting value to impact. Gaining commitment. These skills—like the fundamentals in any sport—require consistent practice, coaching, feedback, and refinement. And they require a methodology that connects them, so they reinforce one another instead of pulling your sellers in different directions. 

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most sellers aren’t underperforming because they don’t know what  to do. They’re underperforming because they haven’t practiced how  to do it with enough frequency or feedback to become proficient. 

If you want a high-performing sales team, the goal isn’t to give them more content or different tools. The goal is to build skill depth. That only happens when: 

  • The methodology is clear, consistent, and embedded in daily sales behavior 
  • Practice isn’t reserved for roleplay days—it’s continuous 
  • Coaching is structured and focused on reinforcing what matters 
  • Learning isn’t an event—it’s a rhythm 

Think about how athletes train. The drills may not change much from week to week. But they get sharper, faster, and more effective because they do them over and over with purpose, feedback, and pressure. That’s how muscle memory is built. That’s how confidence is earned. 

Selling is no different. 

So, if you’re serious about building a team of sales professionals—not dabblers, not guessers—commit to the long game. Invest in structured development. Create a rhythm of practice and coaching. Reinforce the fundamentals until they become second nature. 

Because champions aren’t made by what they know.
They’re made by what they can do, over and over, under pressure. 

And that kind of performance doesn’t come from a workshop.
It comes from a system. A rhythm. A commitment to excellence. 

Want to learn more? Axiom provides a unique alternative to traditional sales training. Unlike traditional sales training events, we embed our methodology into your sales cadence, delivering dramatically better sales results. To learn more about our Mindful Selling Methodology, Kinetics Sales Effectiveness Platform, or our unique, guaranteed approach, please visit us at www.axiomsaleskinetics.com.  

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The Crucial Role of Trusted Advisors in Today’s Sales Environment

by Blogs

The Power of Trust in Sales Relationships 

Becoming a trusted advisor involves more than knowledge; it requires building relationships founded on authenticity, expertise, and a genuine commitment to the buyer’s best interests.

Trusted advisors consistently demonstrate two critical characteristics: 

  • Prioritizing Buyer Interests: Trusted advisors prioritize the buyer’s outcomes, creating an environment of transparency that encourages buyers to share information openly and honestly—critical for tailored solutions. 
  • Authenticity and Expertise: Trusted advisors leverage their expertise transparently, ensuring solutions are accurately aligned with actual buyer needs and never overstated. 
  • Research underscores the importance of trust: According to CSO Insights, organizations adopting a trusted advisor model achieve 10% higher win rates compared to those relying on traditional product pitches. 

Why Being a Trusted Advisor Matters More Than Ever 

Today’s market is saturated with alternatives. When buyers perceive little differentiation, they default to price-based decisions. Salespeople who understand and influence deeper buyer criteria—such as product capabilities, credibility, and support systems—can differentiate themselves effectively, adding significant value. 

Trusted advisors also play a critical role in shaping these decision criteria. They guide buyers toward clearer, informed choices that align with unique business objectives and goals, rather than merely pushing product features or price points. 

Practical Steps to Become a Trusted Advisor 

Developing into a trusted advisor involves several key steps: 

  • Understand the Buyer Deeply: Salespeople should thoroughly explore the buyer’s current situation, goals, and challenges to identify specific business needs and critical gaps. 
  • Help Define Clear Decision Criteria: Advisors help buyers establish robust and measurable criteria for evaluating solutions, moving beyond superficial comparisons and into significant business impacts. 
  • Present Solutions Clearly and Effectively: Trusted advisors deliver compelling recommendations by clearly linking solutions to the buyer’s stated business objectives and challenges. 
  • Effectively Address Buyer Concerns: Rather than seeing objections as obstacles, advisors view them as opportunities for deeper understanding and engagement, reinforcing credibility and strengthening buyer confidence. 

Quantifiable Benefits of Trust-Based Selling 

Organizations prioritizing the development of trusted advisors consistently outperform competitors in these key aspects: 

  • Increased Sales and Profit Margins: Trust-based relationships lead directly to higher win rates and more valuable transactions. 
  • Enhanced Customer Satisfaction and Retention: Buyers remain loyal to advisors who genuinely advocate for their interests, fostering long-term relationships and repeat business. 
  • Lower Sales Team Turnover: Advisors who engage in meaningful, value-driven sales conversations experience greater job satisfaction, reducing attrition rates and stabilizing teams. 

Implementing a Trusted Advisor Culture 

Transforming a sales team into trusted advisors involves consistent skill development, targeted coaching, and structured practice. Effective training programs, continuous coaching from sales leadership, and a culture emphasizing trust and continuous improvement are crucial elements. 

Managers play a critical role by regularly coaching and guiding salespeople, reinforcing behaviors that build trust and deliver value to customers. 

Conclusion: A Path to Sustainable Sales Excellence 

Salespeople who embrace the role of trusted advisors become essential business partners deeply involved in their clients’ ongoing success. By focusing on trust-based selling, organizations achieve superior results and cultivate a rewarding professional environment that attracts and retains top talent. 

The era of transactional selling is giving way to a future where trusted advisors shape lasting customer success. 

Want to learn more? Axiom provides a unique alternative to traditional sales training. Unlike traditional sales training events, we embed our methodology into your sales cadence, delivering dramatically better sales results. To learn more about our Mindful Selling Methodology, Kinetics Sales Effectiveness Platform, or our unique, guaranteed approach, please visit us at www.axiomsaleskinetics.com.  

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The #1 Obstacle to Sales Success

by Blogs

The fundamental challenge for most salespeople – the thing keeping them for achieving maximum results – is that they don’t know what would compel their buyers to move from no to yes. If they ever find out what would compel someone to buy from them, it’s often after the decision is made, and there’s nothing they can do about it. And this isn’t unique to deals they lose. They generally don’t know this information when they win either, but when they win nobody cares.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one. A salesperson walks into a buyer’s office…

If a salesperson walked into a buyer’s office and simply asked, “Would you like to buy from me today?”, there would only be three possible answers. Yes, no, and maybe. Here is an absolute, fundamental truth, there is always something, some set of characteristics or series of events that would compel the buyer to move from no to yes. There is always something! Unfortunately, VERY FEW salespeople have the knowledge, skill, and discipline to figure out what that is. Instead, they “pitch their wares” and hope what they pitch aligns with what the contact will buy. When it is, the salesperson attributes the outcome to their selling skill. And when it isn’t – well, not the salesperson’s fault, the solution wasn’t aligned with that their contact wanted to buy. It was too expensive, lacked critical features, didn’t solve the problem. Whatever, but it wasn’t the salesperson’s fault.

Marketing often tries to address this by helping the salespeople get better at pitching the solution in a more compelling way. (Which, by the way, means the way marketing wants it pitched.) WRONG! While this broad approach is good marketing in that we are focusing on a message that resonates with a broader audience, it is terrible selling. In selling our people are working with an audience of one. Even when multiple people are involved in an evaluation, they aren’t working with a broad homogenous audience, they are working with more individuals, each with their own issues and criteria.

If we are going to get results that are above average, let alone great, we must reframe the job of the salesperson. Job #1 is to understand exactly what will compel the buyer to move from no to yes. That’s even more important than winning because winning without understanding isn’t repeatable and scalable. In fact, you might even say, winning without understanding is just good fortune, not good selling. However, losing with understanding is fixable.

When people know what will compel their contacts to choose one option over another, they:

  • Waste less time on business they cannot win
  • Win at a significantly higher rate
  • Have more satisfied customers
  • Are able to provide product marketing with meaningful information that can be used to deliver a more compelling solution

 

Now this might be easy if every contact could tell every seller exactly what they’d need to see to be convinced to buy their solution now. But buyers simply cannot do this consistently, and when they can they rarely talk with salespeople at all – they simply buy what they want. Fortunately, the inability of buyers to do this creates an enormous opportunity for salespeople who have the skill, knowledge, and discipline to help them figure it out. We know this to be an undeniable truth and if you’ve ever seen it in practice, you know it too.

The future of selling belongs to the people who do this best. At Axiom, we’ve helped develop some of the most effective sales teams in the country by equipping them to do this better than their competition. Want to learn more, connect with us here and let’s determine if and how we can help your team achieve exceptional results.

Effective Sales Coaching

Measure This! How to Ensure You’re Sales Managers are Coaching Effectively

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A development leader I’ve known for quite a few years now was lamenting during a recent conversation about the lack of coaching in his organization.

 

I remember him saying, “Our sales managers aren’t really coaching. They are just another level of people in the organization trying to manage the funnel.”

Naturally, I asked, “Well, why do you think that is happening?”

His reply … “Because that is all their leadership is asking them to do. It is easier to look at the numbers than it is to understand how they are produced and drive a change in behavior.”

 

Unfortunately, this conversation is not at all unusual.

In fact, when we speak at events or conduct coaching webinars, the most frequently asked question is, “How can we measure coaching effectiveness?” Before answering that question, let’s talk about WHY it is important to measure coaching effectiveness. In our experience, we find that not being committed to measuring coaching is actually a much more difficult problem to overcome than most leaders realize. To be certain, the case for coaching is incredibly strong — so strong, in fact, that when we make a statement like “coaching is the pivot point for change in any sales organization, or coaching will have a greater impact on what salespeople do than all other sales enablement initiatives,” we almost never get any disagreement.

Yet, most sales organizations have few or now coaching metrics as a part of their senior leader scorecard. Despite the overwhelming evidence that better coaching produces better results, most organizations still don’t set coaching objectives or measure performance against these targets.

But why is that?

Why aren’t more companies committed to measuring coaching effectiveness?

The answer lies in the response from my learning and development leader – measuring coaching isn’t nearly as easy as measuring the sales forecast or the opportunity funnel. So, it doesn’t get done. But measuring coaching effectiveness doesn’t have to be all that difficult, either. Most sales managers are having conversations with their sellers … conversations about their pipeline, key accounts, and outside opportunities. They are also going on calls with their people. But are they providing coaching, or just feedback? Do they understand the difference?

You see, coaches don’t simply look at numbers and tell us to produce more. They don’t watch us perform and tell us to do better. Real coaches uncover opportunities for improvement and identify the ROOT CAUSE of performance gaps. Real coaches then recommend assignments or activities that will help us shrink those gaps by further developing our skill or knowledge. This means that the output of a truly effective coaching conversation is almost always an assignment of some sort, and assignments can absolutely be tracked.

So, what should an organization measure, in order to determine the effectiveness with which its managers are coaching?

Here is a simple list of the key coaching metrics:

1. Coaching Sessions Conducted

Every conversation between a manager and seller about an opportunity, account, funnel, or meeting should be captured. Ideally, this is as simple as pressing a button inside the CRM and then providing the manager with a place to take notes. Want to get more sophisticated? Distinguish between the different types of coaching conversations to be certain there is adequate balance between opportunity coaching, funnel coaching, account level coaching, and joint calls. In any event, this shouldn’t be a heavy lift for managers. They need to keep track of these conversations any way. By allowing them to do it in the CRM, you can make the job easier for them and, the reporting easier for your operations team.

2. Learning Assignments Given

 The ideal output for a developmental coaching conversation is a developmental or learning assignment. The challenge for many managers is they don’t know what questions to ask to determine the root cause of a performance gap, and even if they did, they wouldn’t know what assignment to give to address the gap. Technology can be leveraged here to lead them through the diagnostic conversation to the appropriate assignment. If the manager can simply select the activity to assign and the appropriate due date, assignments can be tracked easily and efficiently.

3. Selling Assignments Given

 Not all sales issues require developmental assignments. In fact, even when a development assignment is needed, a follow-on selling assignment is needed for the person to apply what they have learned to their current opportunities. This assignment not only helps cement the learning, but it also delivers the ultimate value by advancing sales performance. These activities are nothing more than tasks or events and can easily be assigned, and therefore tracked using the CRM.

4. Assignments Completed

One of the most telling metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of sales coaching is the assignment completion rate. If managers regularly assign learning and selling activities that are not completed by the team, it is likely a larger issue exists. Perhaps the manager has a credibility issue with the team. At minimum there is an accountability issue that must be addressed in order for coaching to be effective.

While all these metrics can be tracked in the CRM, using the typical CRM to support coaching effectiveness is a bit like using Microsoft Windows to create presentations. It is necessary, but not sufficient. If you are going to create presentations, you need to enable PowerPoint for that Windows machine. Similarly, if you want to enable coaching and capture these metrics without creating considerable extra work, you need a coaching solution that enables managers to have more effective and more efficient sale coaching conversations while tracking these critical behaviors.

To be fair, simply tracking these metrics won’t tell us how we are performing unless we compare the actual metrics to some targets and see how they are changing over time. A simple rule of thumb would be to have a target of at least two coaching conversations per seller per month with at least one developmental and one selling assignment.

This approach also facilitates use in a scorecard for those senior leaders who like red, yellow, green visualizations of their team’s performance. An effective coaching solution will actually allow you to set individual targets and measure performance against these for even greater impact. While metrics around funnel health and sales forecasts are absolutely essential for sales excellence, the reality is we won’t really affect those numbers until sales coaching becomes a core competency.

To achieve that, senior leaders should add coaching effectiveness metrics to their scorecard to drive more attention and thoughtful discussion around this most critical success factor.

Want to learn more? Download the Guide to Sales Coaching.

Axiom provides a unique alternative to traditional sales training. Unlike traditional sales coaching events, we embed our methodology into your sales cadence, delivering dramatically better sales results. To learn more about our methodology, Kinetics Sales Effectiveness Platform, or unique, guaranteed approach, please visit us at www.axiomsaleskinetics.com. 

Frustrated Sales Manager

The Big, Hairy Sales Problem

by with No Comment Blogs

We recently spoke to a senior sales operations leader who confessed that they paid more than $2B in sales commissions and had no clue what they actually got for it.

That sounds pretty insane, right? Surely, they got $5B to $20B in revenue for that investment. They had to — or did they?

Therein lies the critical sales problem: Did we win because we outsold the competition, or did we win despite the fact that they’re outselling us? Most sales organizations don’t know the return they’re getting for their sales investment because they don’t have any insight into their selling and coaching behaviors.

That doesn’t mean they don’t recognize the correlation. They simply don’t know whether or not their investment causes them to win more often.

This makes the sales profession the overwhelming laggard in putting quality/process improvement and performance systems in place. It also means this is an opportunity for companies to solve the problem and gain a sustainable competitive advantage. 

Production and Performance Profession

Sales is a unique profession in that it is part production job (think new opportunities, calls, meetings, etc.) and part performance job (think consultation, presentation, differentiation). And unfortunately, most companies’ approach to managing this unique function provides little insight into how a team or individual is doing in either part of the job. 

Let’s start with the production side of this. As we have written before, sales results are the output of a process — one that can be expressed by a simple mathematical formula: 

Activity X Proficiency = Sales

This means that for every person and team in your organization, you can work your way backward from a sales objective to determine exactly what must be produced in terms of predictive metrics such as:

•    New opportunities

•    Proposal ratio

•    New proposals

•    Closing ratio

•    Average sale value

Every person in every sales organization can and should have their own unique “sales success plan.” However, less than 10% of the people we meet have created and are measuring performance against this type of plan.

Why? Primarily because without customization, their CRM won’t allow them to set these targets and measure performance against them.

That’s right! The CRM won’t do the math! Perhaps this is also why many sales organizations create “funnel standards” or “activity standards” instead of creating mathematically valid sales success plans. 

Want to read more about the fallacy of this approach? Check out our blog post on the worst metric in sales

In sales, most sellers, teams, and companies are measuring sales performance and reacting to what happened after the fact rather than looking at leading indicators that can help them proactively act to shape the outcome. So, approximately 90% of all sales organizations are missing the mark on the production side of the profession. Surely, they’re doing better on the performance side, right? Clearly, companies make tremendous investments here. In fact, ATD estimates the average company will invest over $1,400 per person annually for sales training. 

The majority of that training is specifically designed to help more people become proficient in the skills needed to win in the marketplace. However, studies indicate that only about 20% of the people who attend sales training actually use what they learn.

Again, we have to ask, why?

And the reason is shockingly simple — leadership has no insight into who is and isn’t engaging in these behaviors and which managers are and aren’t coaching to the training. They also have no way to determine the impact these behaviors they can’t measure are having on sales performance. 

It isn’t that training programs aren’t measured. It’s that the measurement approach almost ensures that the results aren’t actionable. In today’s world, the “impact” of training is most often determined by interviewing participants and asking questions about what they learned, how they’re using it, and the impact it’s having on their success. To get participation, the results must be anonymized, which means we may uncover themes such as:

•    I would use it more if my manager coached to it.

•    I don’t use it as much because our systems aren’t aligned with it.

•    I don’t remember everything I learned and don’t have easy access to the reinforcement I need, when, and where I need it.

However, we won’t uncover precisely WHO is and isn’t using the training, to what degree they’re using it, who IS and ISN’T coaching, and so on. This means we can’t intervene with the people who need help. To use a medical analogy, it’s great to know in general that certain conditions are linked to heart disease, but it’s of no value to a specific patient if we don’t know about her condition. Moreover, the CRM and LMS systems aren’t designed to trigger the need for learning reinforcement, deliver the learning at the point of need, and then measure its impact.

Not a People Problem … a Systems Problem

Without near real-time visibility into learning, coaching, and selling behaviors, it’s nearly impossible to understand the return we’re getting for investments in selling and coaching initiatives, let alone maximize that return. In the absence of actionable insights, sales teams often replace the people who aren’t performing in hopes their next hire will deliver a better result. This is a wildly expensive approach to performance management and coaching.

The lack of insight combined with investments reaching as high as 25% of revenue has caused many CEOs to refer to sales as a black hole. And this may be the most unique characteristic of the profession: These problems exist DESPITE the fact that other parts of the business, and other professions, solved them long ago. 

For example, the production analytics in manufacturing and logistics are now wildly predictive, thanks to a concerted focus on quality management that began in the 70s. Meanwhile, performance professions such as athletics capture powerful data about the effect of training on skills, behaviors, and performance and use this to coach teams and individuals to achieve greater performance. Considering the size of the sales profession and the impact better (or worse) sales performance can have on the success of an organization, isn’t it time we apply the same rigors to sales performance that we do to manufacturing and golf?

Axiom provides a unique alternative to traditional sales training. Unlike traditional sales coaching events, we embed our methodology into your sales cadence, delivering dramatically better sales results. To learn more about our methodology, Kinetics Sales Effectiveness Platform, or unique, guaranteed approach, please visit us at www.axiomsaleskinetics.com.

Buyer Decision Criteria

It Cost What? Understanding The Buyer’s Criteria

by with No Comment Blogs

Suppose you’re in the market to make a major car purchase. You go through the entire process, and after going through your “buyer’s criteria,” you notice two dealerships with the same car —from the color down to the floor mats. The vehicle comes from the same automaker, has the same warranty, and the dealerships offer similar services and support. In fact, they are even the same distance from your home. But that’s when you notice that one vehicle costs $1,000 more than the other.

Unless you have a relationship with someone at one of these dealerships, are you going to pay a $1,000 premium for what appears to be the exact same alternative? Absolutely not.

Think about What You Sell

We have all heard this from a buyer at one point or another: “You really need to do something about your price.” Unfortunately, not many salespeople truly understand WHY the buyer is saying this. In many cases, the buyers tell us that they see no appreciable difference in our products, the support we offer, or the companies we represent. This leaves them with no basis for a decision other than price. Many times, what they are really saying is, “I think you and your competitors are basically the same. So all I have to decide on is price.”

Does this mean we need to “do something” about our price? Not necessarily. In fact, these buyers may have some ideas about what would make one option better in terms of the product, support, and company that provides it. They may have a clear picture of the BEST alternative and may even be willing to pay a premium to get it.

However, we don’t yet know what that picture looks like, and we haven’t demonstrated that we can provide it.

Get the Picture

We all use buyer’s criteria to make decisions, whether it’s for something as complex and expensive as a car or as simple and relatively inexpensive as a loaf of bread. I will even be so bold as to say we ALWAYS have criteria in at least three areas: product, support/company, and price. Moreover, we rarely buy anything, including a loaf of bread, based solely on price.

You may be shaking your head and insisting that you do buy bread based on price, but hear me out on this. Unless you are a rare person who buys all of your bread from the “day old store,” you don’t purchase bread on price.

How the Most Basic Purchase Decision Is Made

We determine that we need a loaf of bread and then head to a specific store (often based on support characteristics such as selection and/or location). And when we get there, we select a particular loaf of bread (based on specific product characteristics). Does that mean we don’t care about the price? Of course not. If you find that your preferred loaf is suddenly $150 instead of $1.75, you will likely move on to another option.

This is really no different from what your buyers do when evaluating your offering. They began by determining (either on their own or with the assistance of a salesperson) that they have a need for something they believe you can provide. From there, they may even have formulated a picture of what would make one option better than the others.

If we want to differentiate ourselves from other alternatives, we must get a clear picture from them of what is BEST. I’ll take this a step further by saying that it is our obligation to go past their basic needs to understand what the buyer’s criteria will be to decide which solution is BEST in terms of product, support/company, AND price.

Think about this: Wouldn’t it be great to know how the customer/prospect will decide what is BEST in terms of all these areas before we ever spend time putting together and presenting a proposal? Let’s face it, any loaf of bread can be used to make a sandwich. But for a buyer, one will be a better overall choice — and it usually won’t be the cheapest loaf they can buy!

From Need to Criteria

If we are going to bring value to our buyers, we must get beyond needs and develop criteria. Keep this in mind, a need is a requirement, and a criterion is a standard of judgment, rule, or evaluation principle. Needs can be transformed into criteria, if we can help the buyer define what would make one alternative better with respect to a particular need. Not only does developing clear, differentiating criteria help us better understand how to demonstrate value and win, it helps our buyers develop more comfort with their decision. When we do this, we become trusted advisors our buyers will depend on for years to come.

It’s time to stop the “sameness” routine and understand how your prospect will determine what is best so that you can demonstrate that you are!

Want to learn more? Axiom provides a unique alternative to traditional sales training. Unlike traditional sales training events, we embed our methodology into your sales cadence, delivering dramatically better sales results. To learn more about our Mindful Selling Methodology, Kinetics Sales Effectiveness Platform, or our unique, guaranteed approach, please visit us at www.axiomsaleskinetics.com. 

Effective Sales Metrics

The Worst Sales Metric: Why the Most Widely Used Sale Metric is Also the Most Problematic

by with No Comment Blogs

We will get somewhat controversial with today’s article and go after perhaps the most widely used sales metric in all of sales management: The amount in the seller’s funnel. While it is absolutely true that sales is at least (in part) a numbers game, this particular number creates more bad behavior than any other sales metric.

Generally, the implementation of this metric works something like this: sales leaders decide that to achieve their sales objectives, they need to set some minimum performance standards around pipeline or funnel activity. While there’s certainly nothing inherently wrong with that logic, it usually takes the form of an educated guess on how many open opportunities people must have in their funnel at all times.

For example: If leadership believes the team has an average closing ratio of 20%, they must keep 5X their quota in their funnel at all times. If it’s more like 25%, they should maintain 4x their quota.

This seems rational at first glance, right? But assigning a single target for the aggregate amount of opportunities in their respective funnels at all times actually creates some of the least productive sales behaviors we’ve seen.

The Formula for Sales Success

The motive for setting a funnel objective is sound. In fact, sales success can be expressed as a simple mathematical formula: 

Activity X Proficiency = Sales

The key to its usefulness is understanding that we are using it to define how things flow through a process. Unfortunately, measuring the number of opportunities accumulated at a given stage doesn’t ensure adequate flow. 

In fact, it can create the opposite effect. 

Let’s consider a typical example. In this case, the company instructs its sellers always to maintain 4X their quota in their funnel. Naturally, the first thing people do is fill the pipeline until they hit that objective. No problems here. That’s a good outcome. Unfortunately, dysfunction sets in as they work these opportunities. The team expects to close 25% of the opportunities in this case. However, the 75% that don’t close are still in the funnel — or at least a good portion are. 

You see, people who don’t buy from us often invest little to no energy letting us know they’re not going to purchase. When was the last time someone on your team received a call from a prospect to tell them they lost a sale – that they should mark their opportunity lost and remove it from the funnel? It happens, but it certainly isn’t the norm. 

So, let’s assume in this sample scenario that another 25% of the opportunities we lose actually let us know we have lost. This means that to maintain 4X the quota, the seller needs only replace the 50% they know is either lost or won.

The reality is that ALL of it needs to be replaced regularly, but the seller doesn’t realize it. With this 4X standard, the pipeline will degrade over time, and the closing ratio on those opportunities will actually decline. Consider this: If a seller doesn’t close any opportunities and adds anything to the funnel, the aggregate amount will increase while the seller fails miserably. 

This is definitely not the desired outcome!

The Result of a Mismanaged Funnel

And what is the dysfunctional behavior this sales metric is creating? Clinging to existing opportunities instead of prospecting for new ones. In organizations that take the approach of creating a standardized target, sellers and managers debate individual opportunities.

 

Manager — “This opportunity has been in your pipeline forever. What makes you think it is ever going to close?”

Seller — “The last indication I got was that he really liked our proposal. He has just been swamped lately, so we haven’t been able to connect. But I really feel like we are in a good position.”

Manager — “When do you expect to hear from him?”

Seller — “I will ping him again today.”

 

Unfortunately, this conversation is in lieu of a more productive coaching discussion about how the seller is prospecting and qualifying and what changes can be made to improve the flow of activity into the funnel. And, candidly, the extent to which these conversations often devolve and distract can be overwhelming.

Perhaps you think that this is why your organization applies some additional logic, such as an aging rule to the funnel. Maybe you determine that anything over a certain number of days will no longer be counted. The downside is that some of those older opportunities are actually still qualified, so you may arbitrarily reject opportunities that should still be worked. There is still another problem with this approach. Many companies find that they miss their objectives over time despite the activity targets. So what do they do? They raise the target. Soon, these companies find that their top producers don’t actually have the minimum opportunity volume because their closing ratios and average sale values are higher than that of other sellers.

This leaves the entire organization questioning the logic of the target, further diminishing sales effectiveness.

Creating a Personal Sales Success Plan

The good news is that there is a simple, practical alternative that maintains an even greater focus on funnel activity while eliminating dysfunctional behaviors. Rather than a single target for an aggregate amount applied to everyone, why not use the above formula to create a Personal Sales Success Plan for each individual on your team? As you can see below, the math is quite simple.

Annual Sales Volume Required

÷

Number of weeks (or months) available

=

Weekly (monthly) sales volume required

÷

Average value of each sale made

=

Weekly (monthly) number of sales required

÷

Proposal ratio (percentage of opportunities that reach the proposal stage)

=

Weekly (monthly) number of NEW proposals needed to achieve target

÷

Closing ratio (percentage of proposals won)

=

Number of NEW opportunities required each week (month) to achieve target

By using this mathematical formula, each person and team can have their own specific sales success plan. Note the emphasis on NEW opportunities and NEW proposals. Unlike measuring the aggregate amount in a funnel, this approach focuses on continuous and consistent prospecting efforts, helping to keep sellers and leaders from becoming complacent when a stagnant funnel leads them to mistakenly think they have an adequate flow of opportunities. Moreover, since each person has their own unique plan, there is no risk that your most successful people “invalidate” your activity targets because they succeed without achieving them.

Perhaps the one challenge with this approach is implementing it into most CRM systems. Unfortunately, most are designed to report the volume of opportunities at a stage instead of the flow through the pipeline. That’s where the Axiom Success Plan application can help transform your funnel conversations by allowing you to create and roll up these individualized plans for every person and team in your organization.

Axiom provides a unique alternative to traditional sales training. Unlike traditional sales training events, we embed our methodology into your sales cadence, delivering dramatically better sales results. To learn more about our Mindful Selling Methodology, Kinetics Sales Effectiveness Platform, or our unique, guaranteed approach, please visit us at www.axiomsaleskinetics.com. 

Problem Solving

Solving the One Problem All Buyers Have

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From selling solutions to challenging customers and prospects, there seems to be a never-ending barrage of recommendations for salespeople — tell a better story, bring insights, focus on solving problems … the list goes on and on. Most salespeople will benefit from these recommendations and improve in a variety of areas. However, we can’t always say the same for buyers. Many of the most popular sales tactics do little to benefit the buyers and some even put buyers and sellers at odds.

Moreover, challenging them with insights is great — provided that you know more about their business than they do.

And that’s about as rare as volcanic lightning.

Helping buyers solve their problems requires us to understand exactly what those problems are. Or does it?

How to Be a Valuable Resource to Everyone You Meet

The reality is that there is only one reason a modern buyer meets with a salesperson, and it isn’t to relieve their boredom or make a new friend. It’s because they need help. You see, all buyers who take the time to meet with sellers have a singular problem:

They don’t know which product or service they should buy!

Think about that for a moment. If a buyer knows exactly what they want, they rarely need to meet with one salesperson, let alone several. Most products and services can be purchased over the internet without interaction. Perhaps you’re thinking, “but they don’t know about MY product or service.” That may have been true roughly 20 years ago, but there’s so much product information available online today that they can probably learn as much about your product as you know. They may even find someone in their network who already uses it.

So, the only reason to meet with salespeople is to figure out which alternative is best.

This is the first or primary problem for every buyer we meet. Unfortunately for the buyer, most salespeople are so focused on their product or service solutions that they can’t help buyers solve their most basic problem – making an intelligent, informed buying decision. If the salesperson is driving to get deal, and the buyer is trying to figure out what’s best for them, there is a conflict of objectives from the very beginning of the relationship.

While this creates huge challenges for most sellers, it can create tremendous opportunities for those skilled at helping people make better, more informed buying decisions. When salespeople learn to think like buyers, they differentiate themselves throughout the buyer’s journey and transform their relationships. Not only do these people develop stronger, more sustainable relationships, but they will also deliver dramatically better sales results.

Want to learn more? Axiom provides a unique alternative to traditional sales training. Unlike traditional sales training events, we embed our methodology into your sales cadence, delivering dramatically better sales results. To learn more about our Mindful Selling Methodology, Kinetics Sales Effectiveness Platform, or our unique, guaranteed approach, please visit us at www.axiomsaleskinetics.com.

Sale Boat Races

You Know You Have a Sales Challenge. Now What?

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Let’s suppose you run or support a large sales team, and you’ve got a sales challenge. It could be because of missed top line or perhaps shrinking margins. It could even be the wrong product mix or inaccurate forecasts. Or maybe, growth simply isn’t meeting aggressive expectations. Regardless, you definitely have a problem.

So now what?

You analyze the sales problem to find THE root cause, only to find a plethora of underlying issues:

  • Your people don’t qualify well.

  • They aren’t even attempting to sell the full portfolio.

  • No one puts anything into the pricey CRM until the last possible minute, and even then, only when coerced.

  • Forecast accuracy is really forecast inaccuracy.

  • Tons of time and resources are being invested to pursue opportunities you don’t win.

  • Price pressure is intense, and the sales team is constantly asking for better pricing, eroding margins.

So, you decide you are going to do something about it; you are going to train them!

They’ll be trained on everything from bringing insightful ideas to customers to developing buying criteria. You’ll set some standards for what goes into the CRM and start holding people accountable. And perhaps most importantly, you will emphasize coaching so that your managers play an active role in driving better skill, knowledge, and selling.

Investing in a Solution

And what will all this cost, and what return will you get? Well, the typical sales training event will run a large enterprise customer anywhere from $500 to $1,200 per person just to conduct the event. Want to have live events where people meet in person instead of web conference? You’ll need to add travel at approximately $300 per person per day. So, just getting this thing started for a 500-person team and a two-day event requires an “investment” of somewhere between $550,000 and $900,000.

And don’t forget the logistics of scheduling all this. Chances are, if everything works out right, you can get everyone through the training sometime in the next six months, and hopefully, the CSO and CEO will give you that much time and money.

The Impossible Objective of Sales Training Events

All this would be reasonable, of course, if the training actually worked. However, there is mounting evidence that it won’t. In fact, a cursory Google search of “sales training doesn’t work” returns more than 296M hits. Interestingly, many of the articles are actually written by … wait for it … sales training providers. Your training event MAY provide all the right information about all the skills and knowledge your people need to be successful. However, within 30 days, most will forget most of what they learn, and precious few will use, let alone master, any of it.

This phenomenon is illustrated by the now famous Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve shown here via TrainingIndustry.com. The reality is most sales training programs have far more information, and more skills to develop, than can be absorbed by participants in the allotted time. The reason for this is simple. Neuroscience has shown us that people must go through a cycle of learning a skill, practicing that skill, applying it, and then evaluating their effectiveness (preferably with a coach) for each new skill and/or iteration of a current skill. Key to this cycle is sleep! At least one sleep cycle is needed for each skill or major iteration to allow the brain to properly process what it has learned. A good sales training program will likely have dozens of new skills for your people to learn, but only a couple days in which to make that happen. It is simply impossible. 

Of course, there is an option to overcome the forgetting curve: Pay the training provider to keep coming back or trickle follow-up training out to your team. This may actually help IF they have everything you need (or will ever need), and your entire team has a single homogenous development path. Unfortunately, neither is true.

However, some people do become proficient with new skills – if they didn’t no one would invest in sales training, but they do. In fact, in a recent webinar with more than 100 participants, more than half had implementing a new sales methodology as a primary sales enablement initiative. Having worked with Western Michigan University’s Evaluation Center to analyze why and how this happens, we know that the difference between high adopters and low adopters has little to do with the training events. The difference is what happens after these events, and therefore the solution isn’t to abandon sales training, it is to reimagine how we do it.

An Alternative Approach

Instead of depending on sales training events, sales skill development needs to happen on the job, one skill at a time, when learning can actually be applied to real selling scenarios. In order to accomplish this, learning must be continuous as a part of the normal sales motions. And, critically, sales managers must transition from feedback to coaching that drives continuous learning and improved execution. Finally, technology must be employed to help promote the adoption of new skills by surfacing key concepts as they relate to real-world opportunities. Meanwhile, online learning content must be accessible to coaches and sellers with as little friction as possible.

Teams that get into a cadence of learning and coaching as an integral part of their regular sales motions are able to realize dramatically better adoption of new skills, corresponding business impact, and program ROI. More importantly, they develop the habit of continuous improvement through regular learning and coaching, making them more adaptable to their environment as markets, solutions, and buyers evolve. They truly develop a sustainable competitive advantage – better learning, better coaching, and better selling.

Want to learn more about how you can embed learning and coaching into your sales motions? Connect with us and we’ll help you determine the best approach for your sales organization.

Axiom provides a unique alternative to traditional sales training. Unlike traditional sales training events, we embed our methodology into your sales cadence, delivering dramatically better sales results. To learn more about our Mindful Selling Methodology, Kinetics Sales Effectiveness Platform, or our unique, guaranteed approach, please visit us at www.axiomsaleskinetics.com.