Debbie Mrazek, President of The Sales Company, is Tom Fox’s guest on this week’s episode of the Innovation in Compliance Podcast. She has spent her career helping individuals and companies around the world as a sales consultant helping them develop good customer relationships. Debbie joins Tom to talk about sales processes and what compliance professionals can learn from sales personnel.
Active Listening and Communication: The Key To Success in Sales
Active listening is the key to success in sales, as the sales process is all about communication. Knowing when to speak and when to be quiet is vital, Debbie stresses: “If you’re talking more than 60% of the time, shut up. You’re not learning anything; you’re not getting any new information.” Learning to ask open-ended questions and allowing the other person to do most of the talking will go a long way. Anyone can learn the skills of a salesman, and you don’t have to be extroverted or a social butterfly to be successful in sales. All you need to do is be able to carry conversations and have genuine care for your clients.
A Proper Sales Forecast
A proper sales forecast isn’t one that’s done only once a year, but rather every day. Done this way, it drives the sales process further and also improves time management. Sales professionals can see at any point where they did well or where they went wrong. “Tackling the numbers, really understanding what they are, keeping up with them every single day, and knowing where you stand…and where you have shortcomings [can help immensely],” Debbie says. Tom adds that assessing your risk, and assessing them annually, as well as monitoring them and then adjusting your risk strategy where needed is also important.
Relationships are Key
The traditional sales model has the sales professional go out and acquire the potential client then turn them over to the inside sales customer. This approach, Debbie remarks, has its flaws because the relationship the sales professional built with the client ends up being tossed over to a stranger. Relationships are a key part about sales. “We want to establish relationships where people can come back to us again and again,” Debbie says. She talks about the third sales model which she calls the flexible sales process. In this model, the sales professional acquires the client but gets to maintain the relationship whilst working closely with the inside customer service people. Everyone in the sales department is working together as opposed to individual silos with poor communication. “I believe this serves your company the best, as well as serves your clients the best because everybody’s in it to win it,” Debbie remarks.
Improving Your Sales Model
For individuals established in business, improving the sales model will follow the lines of assessing what’s already been done in the sales department. It involves asking yourself questions like how long it took to close an opportunity with a client and whether or not that client has bought from you more than once. Sales personnel can then use that information when they’re forecasting what they want to do in the future. Tom remarks that these concepts are applicable for in-house compliance professionals as well. Building relationships, taking information from the relationships you developed, and then implementing that into the sales or service offerings is important.
The Impact of COVID-19 and What’s Next
The pandemic has impacted the approach to sales, Debbie tells Tom. Going forward, people will decide how they want to connect and communicate with sales professionals, whether in-person, virtually, or a hybrid of both. Debbie stresses that sales professionals have to have conversations with each prospect about this because they need to know what their clients want. Sales in the future will continue to see more innovation with respect to technology and the availability of data. Salespeople are going to learn how to use data like AI. She also believes that these kinds of technologies will be more user-friendly in the coming years.
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Resources
Debbie Mrazek | LinkedIn | Twitter
The Sales Company
