One more blog article designed to help Emerging Leader Account Executives to techniques that will lead to them delivering ambitious results for their company. I wanted to share five more Best Practices with you again today, to wrap up our three-part series on Sales Account Executive Best Practices. If you want to see the first pair of articles on this topic, you can go to our LinkedIn profile, or visit https://www.michaelbeachcoach.com and navigate to ‘Ask the Coach‘. We hope you’re enjoying these articles and finding them useful. The world is so much better when sales people show their talent with their prospects and customers. Sales is a really wonderful profession that gets a bad rap, like politicians and attorneys. We are on a mission to help change that….

1. Avoid insecurity in your selling. IBM’s Thomas Watson taught his team to act as if they were already the world’s greatest company, well before they became a dominant force in the technology industry. Think big, act big, and have a confident, positive attitude, because it will become infectious. Be careful not to go so far as to become arrogant. Confident, but never obnoxious… that’s the balance you’re looking for.
2. Use a whiteboard or flip charts effectively. Don’t overuse PowerPoint slides. Working with your prospect at that moment, and writing in real time on a whiteboard or flip chart, is ten times more dynamic and interactive than a canned PowerPoint presentation. Grab the attention of your prospects by understanding their business and asking compelling questions during your whiteboard presentation. This indicates that you are appropriately focused on getting to the root of their problem or challenge. By rolling up your sleeves and positioning yourself as a member of the prospect’s team, you can work collaboratively on tailored solutions fit to their needs.
3. Avoid all temptation to be manipulative with your customers. Show your customers from your first interaction that you are different and willing to do the “heavy” lifting to provide extraordinary value for them. Focus on building a strong relationship with each of your customers, the kind that makes them feel like family. Be honest about your knowledge and commit to putting the customer’s interests first every time. If you don’t have the answers, make it your mission in life to get them quickly, but don’t pretend to know everything. Sales success always rests on a foundation of hard-earned trust. You can destroy a decade of trust in an instant, and regaining it will take 100 times longer. Treat each customer like they are your only customer.
4. Get the deal you’re working on off the street as quickly as possible. Time kills deals, but only if you let it. If your prospect or customer is ready for the deal to close, gather up your confidence and execute your strategy to close the deal. Ask for the order, and follow your plan to close and deliver quickly, to prevent your competition from one last-chance effort to steal the deal from you. Don’t rush the customer, but don’t dilly-dally around waiting for the competition to swoop in and steal your deal either. Remember that every day that the deal hasn’t closed is a day that your competitor can come in and mess things up for you. Move ahead with deliberate determination, and close the deal.

5) You need to become a very skilled negotiator and treat all negotiations as an opportunity to create lasting value for all involved parties by building a WIN/WIN solution. Preparation for a successful negotiation is paramount to your ability to achieve a great outcome. While negotiating, spend more time listening and thinking, than speaking, and ask powerful questions to allow you to understand how you can help your prospect to win, while ensuring a win for your company simultaneously. Understand the best alternatives to a negotiated agreement for your prospect and also for your company. Focus on trying to deliver results that help both parties to arrive at a solution that matches their interests, and not their initial positions. Approach the negotiation like your objective is to arrive at a joint solution that benefits everyone, not just your team. Be prepared to say no, and learn how to say no in such a way that it seems like anything but a no. Be prepared to ask for quid pro quo in a negotiation so that you can avoid being abused, and don’t forget to ask for the ability to publicize your win to gain positive PR for important new customer acquisitions, when appropriate.

Michael is an award winning Certified Professional Business Coach who specializes in coaching Hey, I hope this series of articles on Best Practices for Account Executives was valuable for you. I love working with Sales Professionals and helping them to get into a rhythm of growing revenue and margins dramatically, from year to year. With these Best Practices and some hard work, and consistently good choices about how to prioritize your time, you can begin to deliver extraordinary results in YOUR territory. If you would like more information about great sales behavior, visit our YouTube channel Michael Beach Coaching & Consulting. We wish you a tremendously strong finish to your year and hope you are crushing your number and getting into accelerators. Life is beautiful when we’re delivering results ahead of quota, isn’t it?

 Emerging Leaders. Many of Michael’s sales clients use the disciplines and techniques that he shares with them to quickly move to the top of the leader board in their companies. If you’d like to inquire about having Michael come and motivate your sales team in the 4th quarter, or at the start of 2017 at your annual sales kickoff, send Michael an email at info@michaelbeachcoach.com. Michael welcomes you to add a comment to this blog if you’re so inclined. There’s nothing better than getting a good dialog going with a bunch of dedicated sales professionals. Sales is a marathon, not a sprint, and Michael hopes that you’re making the most of your marathon this year. If you’d like to subscribe to Michael’s Emerging Leaders Newsletter, send us a message at info@michaelbeachcoach.com and we’ll send you our 25 Best Sales Practices for your trouble, free of charge, of course. Til next time…