Ep. 191 All Hands on Deck

To have a successful business in the post covid era, everyone in the company, regardless of their specific skills and job assignments, must be involved in selling. Joe Pici shares strategies for creating company wide ‘buy in’ for increasing sales.

Podcast Transcript:

Voice over:

Get ready for an unfair advantage over your competition. This is The Sales Edge podcast. Where globally recognized sales expert and trainer Joe Pici helps you sharpen your skills for booking for appointments and closing more deals. And now here’s your host Joe Pici.

Joe Pici (JP):

Hey team, this is Joe Pici of The Sales Edge podcast. Thank you so much for coming back. And you know today we’re going to talk about all hands on deck. You know, to have a successful business in and during and post covid era, everyone in the company regardless of the specific skills in job assignments must be involved in selling. Today I’m going to show you how you can build a team based on skill rather than experience. Apply the bricklayer process to development of team unity and deliver long-term results by viewing selling as an ongoing process rather than a one-off event. Once again, welcome to the sales edge podcast and this is podcast number 191 and our hosts are you know, our sponsors are Pici and Pici, a speaking, training, coaching, consulting, company helping clients recapture lost revenue, get in front of your target market and also that sell more virtually.com. That is a membership platform whereby every Thursday night Joe Pici is on live doing group coaching and training. We have downloads, interviews, guests. It’s a great platform, so visit that. And so as we’re moving forward with, you know, in address Oak. Also, please feel free to have a free cup of joe 407 947 2590 and send me an e-mail Joe@piciandpici.com. Send me any your disagreements, agreement, suggestions. Guests you’d like to have. Those were moving forward, you know addressing new challenges in selling means building a revenue team that draws on the skills of the entire organization. Uniting your company around single goal means creating revenue teams. A revenue team is a group of sales professionals and non-professionals, who use their different roles in the company towards one goal, serving the client over the long term. This means they use a team approach to meet a wide range of client demands and needs. They achieve success not just making the sale but, developing long-term repeat clients who provide quality referrals. This also has added benefit of creating an atmosphere of which success is shared by everyone.

So folks on being totally transparent with you, that I am so tired of hearing people say I don’t sell that’s not my job. That’s not what I was hired for. That’s not my job description. That’s not what I got involved in. Yes, I know that I own the company, but I don’t want to be involved in sales. I don’t want to have to be the person that sells and that’s all fine. And that’s all great. You may not be that person that is required to generate those leads, to pick up the phone and book an appointment and you don’t have to be. That’s only part and parcel to sales. You may not want to be the one to make the outbound calls, to make the cold calls and that’s okay. You’re still part of a team that is involved in sales.

Everyone on the team must know the importance of revenue and sales. Because when sales stop, the company dies and people lose their job, and bad things happen. Recently I was with one of our favorite local clients and I was sitting with Joe and Timmy and you know what we were just talking over sales initiatives, refocusing sales, you know, this whole covid thing has has caused people to rethink everything they’re doing. Realign, refocus, have better clarity. And so I’ll never forget Timmy gets up, he gets the pen in his hand and he says, “we have got to understand all hands need to be on deck”. Everybody sells. And I’ll tell you I’ve known the people this company a long time. I’ve known Timmy a long time. I’ve got to say it’s the best thing that ever came out of his mouth because what he was saying was everybody involved at this company has to take the responsibility to drive revenue, to be involved in some aspect of sales. So here are some steps to create this environment.

Number one, focus on skills, not experience. Not how you did things in the past. Not your last role assignment. You know, because the way covid has affected the sales process things have changed, things have evolved. You know, I did a podcast on Virtual selling I do training on Virtual selling and I can tell you virtual selling does not shorten the sales cycle. In fact in some situations it makes it longer. You know, it although experience is great and it brings confidence. That doesn’t always mean your present skills, your present experience can move you to the next level.

You want to buy into the idea that things must be done somewhat differently than they used to be done. You know, and so so who gets trained at the company when it comes to revenue producing actions? Number one, everyone at the company should be trained in mastering communication skills. I don’t care if you are the CPA. I don’t care if you’re a bean counter. I don’t care if you perceive yourself as somebody who just answers the phone. Actually good friend of mine, Andy Andrews says, “whoever answers your phone is this is the Chief Operating Officer of First Connections”. Think about that, the Chief Operating Officer of First Connections, that’s incredible. And so everybody in the whole company needs to understand communications. If you’re back in the office and people are coming to your office, I don’t care what position you hold, we must be Master Communicator.

The second one is, everyone at the company needs to know who is our target market. What is our product and what is the value proposition? You know, I work with the company a franchise that’s a national and you know, we literally put a script by the phone. So if the tech from the back answered the phone they knew exactly how to communicate and what to say. And so everybody needs to know that, needs to be on the same page.

A third thing, everyone in the company needs to learn great customer service. Customer service retains clients. Customer service one of the top four reasons why people become your client and stay your client. So I believe that there has to be internal education on these things. For who? Everyone.

Many years ago Dawn and I landed a contract in Brevard County and it was an engineering firm and the blot engineers and they had two sales people, no four sales people and the owner said to me so so you’re going to come in here and train our people and and so we’ll need four sets of materials. I said, I’m sorry I said, how many people in your company touch your clients? Excuse me? How many people in your company touch your clients? He said well 80% of them. I said then we need 80%. Because a big part of touching the client is Communications and the ability to cross-sell and upsell.

Everyone, number four, in the in the whole company needs to understand phone etiquette. Now, I’m not saying they need to be able to pick up the phone, make a cold call, book an appointment. That’s not I’m saying. Phone etiquette. It’s shocking to me at what I hear people say and how they say it on the phone. Phone etiquette needs to be trained. It needs, and it’s not just being nice. It’s being nice understanding communication styles.

Number five, everyone in the company needs to know how to build, that what they do will either build or destroy the brand. Their actions, their word, everything that goes on there either going to build your brand or destroy it. People need to know that, need to have training on that, education. Of course, number five, the sales team must master lead generation, booking, appointments, core story, or sales meeting, live or virtual, follow-up, overcoming objections, closing to sales proposals, the whole sales process.

Now number six, everyone in the company needs to be able to answer this question. These questions. What do you do? Who do you do it for? And what are two or three things that makes you, your company unique? People need to know that, that’s important.

Next I believe doing office hours. I’m going to get pushback on this. I’ll probably get hate mail. They don’t send hate mail any more, they send hate e-mail. Or you may call and rip me, whatever. This is a Joe’ism. I believe during office hours, unless your company has a uniform where you have to wear a tie and a jacket, everyone in the company should wear a shirt with your logo on it. People walk in, they need to see that. You go to lunch during business hours, you are spreading the brand. That’s why everybody is involved in sales. I can’t tell you how many times I’m in an elevator and people point out my shirt and they go. Who’s that?

You see, your company, you, are paying thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on pay-per-click formal advertising and yet we’re not even wearing a shirt with a logo on it of our company.

So let’s go to the number two aspect of what we’re doing here. Articulate how each rule influences selling outcomes. Every role in the company. Herb Kelleher, co-founder of South East Airlines, Southwest, Sorry. Famously remarked that the important thing is to take the bricklayer and make him understand he’s building a home not just laying bricks.

This idea perfectly describes a key responsibility of the sales leader. Each person on the revenue team, which we’ve decided is everybody in the company, of course. They must be able to see how their work influences the overall success of the selling organization. Making this connection visibly not only boosts the cohesiveness of the team, but it also instills healthy sense of urgency and resolve in each team member. This, this speed is important in setting which customers increasingly expect fast responses. So this is a whole package. This is a whole culture. Is your culture one of selling? Okay, does everybody in the company are they all on the same page? Do they all have the same vision, is everybody in the company understanding this number one thing? Revenue allows everyone in the company to go to work there. Revenue allows things to happen. You know, when we break up our company into silos, you do this, you do that, that’s important. However, every silo must take some responsibility on generating revenue. So you want to help every member to see the house rather than the bricks.

You know, it’s always amazing because operations want to do operations but they don’t want to do sales. Consulting want to do Consulting, but nobody wants to do sales. Okay, customer service wants to do customer. You know, I got a client, what a great client and I started working with them and their number one customer service person took it on herself to learn some sales skills. And as I’m looking at the data of the whole company, she was third or Fourth and revenue last month, because she’s learned some skills about how to turn a customer service call and move it into a value proposition, which moves it into more revenue, more sales. My hats off to her.

When a team is aligned to a customer center approach, They’re are more adept at helping the customer move from one member to the next as a sales conversation will move. In other words, many times in your business you’re going to have aspects of the selling process that you have to bring people in. If we’re not singing off the same sheet of paper, If we don’t all message the same way, if we’re not congruent in what we say and how we say it, then all of a sudden you’re going to want to deal with one type of person.

You see, one team, one dream, one process, one message. I’m not trying to take your individuality away from you. But I am saying this, to build a massive brand, to build a massive company, you have to have massive revenue and everybody has to be on deck. All hands on deck when it comes to sales.

And next, third section, effective revenue teams must adopt the mindset in which selling is seen as an ongoing process, rather than a project with a definitive end. Okay, it goes on in a modern sales organization. Everybody is involved in selling. Uniting the company around a single goal means creating revenue teams that represent a wide variety of skills aligned with the same goal of serving the client over the long term.

So let me challenge you. Let me challenge every company that may be listening to this. Every individual. Please stop saying “I don’t sell”, please don’t say that.

Please understand, you’re part of a greater picture. Whether you’re the owner of the company with well, whoever you are you affect revenue, you affect sales. Learning some skills in communications, learning the messaging, learning value propositions, being willing willing to wear your logo with pride, growing the brand, learning something about how to utilize LinkedIn to grow the company brand, all of these things will bottom line into greater revenue.

And so this was the beginning of helping you see that in the 21st century during and post covid, It’s going to be the companies that have all hands on deck that are going too far-gain an unfair advantage over the competition. So I challenge you to be part of that process.

So what I like to do is take a moment and and visit our SellMoreVirtually.com website. Tremendous membership portal. There’s also some giveaways there. There’s e-courses. Take out your phone and put the word sales edged in, one word. Send it to 55678. It’ll take you to a splash page which will give you five video ecourse, on a recapture lost revenue to Virtual selling. Also links to that website and free downloads and our podcast. Of course, you know, you can call me anytime, but more than anything, if this is a value to you, can you like it? Can you share it and can you write a great comment about it? So thank you so much. This has been The Sales Edge podcast and we’ll see you again.

Voiceover:

Thanks for listening. New episodes will air each Tuesday and Thursday. So make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and give us a five star review. The Sales Edge is sponsored by Pici and Pici Incorporated. A firm which provides training, consulting, and keynote presentations. Empowering corporations and individuals to attract and retain quality clients for higher revenues and growth. Make more money in sales. Speak with Joe in person by calling 407 947 2590. or visit www.piciandpici.com