Behik Blog

There are two primary sources of conflict among people, in both their personal and business relationships: individual differences and stylistic clashes. In business relationships, a third factor contributes to the generation of conflict: organizational conditions.
Individual Differences
No two human beings—not even identical twins—are alike in all aspects. No big news here. Each person is unique, [...]

Conflict is the condition in which the needs or desires of two or more parties appear to be incompatible. When two or more parties vie for the same thing—whether it is money, materials, space, time, or any other resource—they are in conflict. The word conflict comes from the Latin fligere ("to strike") and com ("together"), [...]

Think back for a moment to the situation that Jeffrey Erle walked into at Litton and to the compromise that the pharmaceutical president believed would solve a contentious problem. Until Erle came on the scene, destructive conflict was accepted as the status quo and allowed to fester. And in the pharmaceutical company, the president’s split-the-baby-in-half [...]

The biggest misconception that people hold about conflict is that it is intrinsically bad. But conflict in and of itself is an inevitable social and organizational reality. Whether one subscribes to the Bible or to Freud, conflict is rooted in the human condition and is not necessarily an indicator of dysfunction. It just is.
It [...]

"By some estimates, managers spend 20% of their time in conflict or managing it. A manager who earns $60,000 will be wasting, in profitability terms, $12,000 of that salary on conflict. If your company has 10 managers, that’s a $120,000 hit to your bottom line."
When Jeffrey Erle took over as president of Litton Enterprise [...]

When companies invest in sales training, the expected outcome is often a change in their salespeople’s behavior. Unfortunately, most companies drastically underestimate the amount of time and effort that must be invested to accomplish behavioral change.
Sitting in a class for a couple of hours or days is a good way to expose salespeople to [...]

Many managers and salespeople hold the opinion that salespeople need to have a thorough technical understanding of an offering in order to sell it effectively. To develop this understanding, companies invest substantial amounts of time and money in exhaustive training to educate salespeople on product features, performance characteristics, industry information, pricing guidelines, promotional activities, available [...]

Many sales training curriculums provide the same content at the same pace to all training attendees. There are two primary challenges with this approach. The first challenge is that individual salespeople have different training needs. The second challenge is that people learn at different rates.
To better understand the first challenge, different training needs, consider [...]

How can a sales training program be effective if the attendees lack the attributes required for sales success? Putting individuals who lack the necessary attributes through a sales training program is a little like using a brick to absorb water. Over long periods of time, the brick may actually absorb a little water. However, it [...]

What constitutes failure in a sales training program? A sales training program is considered a failure if the salespeople who completed the program are unable to integrate the concepts taught during the training into their day-to-day selling activities.
Such failures are frustrating for both employers and salespeople. Employers are frustrated because they don’t earn the [...]

To inspect whether salespeople are performing activities correctly, you either need to see them in action, or you need to conduct post-activity inspections. To see your salespeople in action, go on “buddy calls” with them. Listen in on the telephone when they are speaking with suspects, prospects and customers. Sit in the audience when they [...]

To determine whether salespeople are investing their time in the correct activities, review their daily calendars on a regular basis. Are they performing all of the activities that are listed in their Prospecting Plans? (See : How to Develop an Effective Prospecting Plan.) What proportion of their time are they investing in each activity? What [...]

Are you feeling a little nervous about building an Income Floor into your sales compensation plan? If you are, it is probably due to past bad experiences. Many companies have invested huge sums in salesperson salaries, draws, guaranteed commissions, etc., only to see their investments fail miserably. Earlier in the book we examined one of [...]

The failure of incentives is usually due to one of three conditions. The most common condition is a lack of the attributes required for sales success. When salespeople lack the attributes required for sales success, no amount of incentives will cause them to suddenly sell more effectively. A more likely outcome is that they will [...]

There is no such thing as a universal “best” sales compensation plan. The best plan for your company will be one that successfully motivates desired behaviors and is relatively easy for your salespeople to understand.

Companies may also add additional incentives to sales compensation plans. Common incentives include offering fixed dollar bonuses or multiplier “kickers” to promote team selling, cross-selling, sales of specific products, and increases in customer satisfaction. These incentives can motivate desirable behavior in some circumstances (see Why Incentives Fail), but this motivation comes at the price of [...]

Compensation plans that attract and motivate quality salespeople usually include some type of Income Floor. This is a guaranteed minimum amount of compensation that the salesperson earns within a specified time period. The Income Floor is usually provided in one of three ways: via a Salary, a Recoverable Draw, or a Non-Recoverable Draw. Here are [...]

Many companies make the mistake of offering a 100-percent commission compensation plan. Why? This type of plan minimizes their risk, as no sales made means no commissions paid. Besides, any salesperson who is any good should have enough faith in their own ability to work on 100-percent commission, right?
It doesn’t work that way. Any [...]

As companies prepare to hire salespeople, they need to make decisions around Sales Territories. Sales territories are usually established for two primary purposes: (1) to foster penetration of a defined market, and (2) to prevent wasted resources, i.e., multiple salespeople investing time, effort, and company resources in pursuing the same accounts.
There are an infinite [...]

Confidence percentages should indicate how close an opportunity line item is to closing. This concept is not new to most salespeople and managers. The challenge is ensuring that the confidence percentages that are associated with individual opportunity line items are truly valid. This is best accomplished by publishing explicit definitions for confidence percentages and teaching [...]

When I was a salesperson, my monthly commissions were based upon order shipments. As a result, my daily Opportunity Pipeline analysis always began with a quick review of Booked orders, with the question in mind, “Is there anything that I can do today that will help one of my Booked orders ship sooner?” Then I [...]

Including the following data elements will maximize the utility of opportunity pipeline reports for both salespeople and management:
Salesperson Name: This should be at the report header level for individual salesperson reports, and at the line item level for sales branch or company reports.
Company Name: This is the name of the prospect or customer [...]

Companies base very important decisions on their sales opportunity pipelines. Examples include employee headcount, inventory levels, marketing investments, etc. If opportunity pipelines are inaccurate, or if opportunities do not close in predictable time frames, it can wreak havoc on vital financial measurements such as revenue, profit, and cash flow. This makes maximizing the accuracy of [...]

Another tremendous sales closing aid is customer testimonials. What is a testimonial? It is a written statement from an existing customer that explains how you, your offering, and/or your company delivered value to that customer’s business. These statements may be as brief as a single sentence, or they may be as lengthy as a multi-page [...]

If salespeople do a superior job of qualifying opportunities, closing sales becomes simple and matter-of-fact. I have been a student of consultative selling for sixteen-plus years, and I have used a grand total of four “closes” during my career. These are the Financial Close, the Chronology Close, the Ben Franklin Close, and the Thermometer Close. [...]

Technical/Detailed Qualification takes place after Business Problem and M-A-I-N BP qualification have been completed, and after a conscious decision has been made to invest time and resources in pursuing a sales cycle. In Technical/Detailed Qualification, the selling company’s technical (and other) experts work with the prospect company’s experts to troubleshoot business problems, determine root causes, [...]

Many salespeople are desperate to engage prospects in sales cycles. After all, it is much more fun to manage sales cycles than it is to prospect. Plus, they get to add opportunities to their pipeline, which gives their sales manager the impression that they are actually doing something useful. These salespeople have blind faith that [...]

Business problem qualification is the process of asking questions to determine whether a prospect has any of the business problems that your company’s offerings can address, and to quantify the impact of these business problems.
What is a business problem? A business problem is any activity or outcome that negatively impacts a business. Examples of [...]

Many sales methodology training courses focus considerable attention on closing techniques. In fact, there are entire books written about how to “close” sales. Certainly closing is an important activity, as the time, effort, and resources invested in managing sales cycles are wasted if orders are not secured. However, the real secret to closing sales is [...]

How can you devise the Prospecting Plan that will be most effective for you? Begin by identifying your best prospects. The questions listed in Chapter 5: Defining Your Sales Job will help you accomplish this task. Once you have identified target prospects, find out where and how they “cluster”. Do they belong to specific trade, [...]

If you have a talent for writing, you can use it to help you build credibility and relationships with suspects, prospects and customers. Write articles and submit them to your local business journal or newspaper. Submit articles to trade publications and any other publications that your prospects might read. Write and publish a monthly newsletter [...]