funds for sales professionals is a very practical hands-on session and I'm going to offer some tools throughout this so at the end if you're interested in any of the tools that you see I will definitely make them available to you all you have to do is contact me or Rebecca at AED and we'll get them to you. There is always a risk that in day-to-day busyness salespeople will be distracted from proactive activities. You know we can get caught up in the urgent with quote requests, keeping customers happy, and putting out fires but now it's time to proactively sell and be order makers and not just order takers and this requires three vital planning disciplines. Territory planning, account strategic planning, and above most importance pre-call tactical planning. This powerful workshop will equip frontline sales professionals and sales managers with the direction and some proven tools essential for getting these vital planning disciplines accomplished. These activities that we're going to look at are time management investments that assure short and long term sales success. The tools and disciplines that we introduced today are part of a comprehensive curriculum for sales professionals titled the four pillars of the sales profession. An executive overview of the four pillars will provide a big picture perspective and then it'll help us set the stage to dig into those vital planning disciplines that we will expound on today. At sales professional training we believe in building structure, tools, and disciplines into our sales profession. The four pillars will establish a solid foundation to help you and your team begin to build some notable improvements into your sales team structure. So just as an introduction I'm going to just quickly walk through these four pillars and give you a picture because within these four pillars are the disciplines, the planning disciplines that we're going to talk about today. And I think the first pillar is personal disciplines and I think ownership is really important here. I saw a funny cartoon but it was all too real. It showed a sales manager looking over the shoulder of a sales person sitting at their desk and the caption read, why aren't you working? And the sales person's reply, I didn't see you coming. See it always comes down to each sales professional on the team knowing what to do and then having the skill to do it. The crucial component for success in our sales career and in assembling a great sales team is to build a structure and to standardize what is expected of us as sales professions. You know we must know what is expected and have the tools and the skills and the disciplines to do those things consistently and effectively. And that leads to the four pillars. Pillar one is personal disciplines. Selling is primarily a personally driven individual sport. When a pro athlete's out there doing what they do as a profession, everybody sees it. But when a professional sales person is out there doing what they do as a profession, really nobody sees it. And that's why it's important and even the things that we cover in this webinar will help build a structure of fundamental tools and disciplines to assure consistent actions and maximized results. Pillar two is relationship skills. And this is a given. People buy from people. They buy from people they like and people that they trust. Sales professionals need to be masters of communication skills, of listening, and being able to adapt to all styles of people. Pillar three, strategic selling. Actually in a lot of the dealers that I've worked with, and I've worked with equipment dealers all across North America, strategic selling, believe it or not, is one of the weakest pillars. And that's why a lot of the planning disciplines that we talk about today is part of strategic selling. Sales people have to get the big picture of all the activities required by them throughout the life of long-term customers. That's preeminent. Duties for marketing, selling, and serving customers must be established. Sales professionals, this is a very important line here, must invest thought and research into the status and direction of each account. They've got to know who's out there, who's buying, what the machine population data is, who's not buying from them, what the potential is. They need to know that. And one of the ways that we help them do that that we'll talk about today is to at least to walk before they run and do some formal strategic planning for selected key accounts. I'm talking about picking some major accounts and not just calling on them every day, but actually coming up with a plan and working that plan. And then finally, a major component of being a professional salesperson is pillar four, tactical selling. The interaction with the customer, that's where sales are won or lost. Every call counts. Sales are won or lost when you're hanging off the side of a machine or out there on the job site or in the rental yard or sitting across the table from a customer. Every call counts. Every call is different, but brilliant execution of tactical selling requires a very important planning, and that is pre-call planning. No more winging it, no more pulling it out of your back pocket or somewhere close, or just showing up and throwing up. Pre-call planning is probably one of the most vital planning disciplines for salespeople to be effective and to get the job done. And that not only requires planning, but it requires continued practice and work in the skills. Now, within those four pillars, we've identified, at Sales Professional Training, 24 personal disciplines. These are skills and activities that salespeople need to be doing. And if you look carefully at this list, you'll say, man, yeah, I want my salespeople to do that. I want them to be a 10 out of 10 on all of these things. Actually, during the training, we have them, after the training, when I do a full-blown training camp, I have them rate themselves 1 to 10 on each of these and come up with a personal action item for each one, so that they start getting better. And even have their manager rate them 1 to 10, and then have a coaching session afterwards to say, okay, the ones that you're not a 10 on, what are we going to do to help take your game to another level, and what can I do to really coach you? Well, in this quick hour and a half webinar, if we really zero in on a few areas here, most of these disciplines are covered by three planning disciplines. Time management, territory management, and reporting actions are all part of territory planning. Another vital planning discipline is account strategic planning. And then, to take all that to the street, we need tactical pre-call planning. So, within those 24 disciplines, the majority of them are covered by really taking a look at these three things that we're going to look at in this quick initial webinar together. But when you look at all these planning disciplines and all their things that are required by salespeople, I think it's important to understand that this is like a moving target. They're out there in a battle. They're on the front lines. And war is very complicated and confusing. Battle is chaotic. Nevertheless, you must not allow chaos. When you're out there on the front lines, war is sloppy and messy, and positions turn around, and things are always changing. Nevertheless, you must never be defeated. You see, chaos gives birth to control. Fear gives birth to courage. Weakness gives birth to strength. You must control chaos. And then, Sun Tzu from The Art of War says, this depends on your planning. And so, today, we're going to break down three areas of vital planning for salespeople. Territory planning, account strategic planning, and pre-call tactical planning. You know, people don't necessarily plan to fail. They just fail to plan, but not us. Are you ready to dig into these? Let's start with territory planning. You know, salespeople need to run their territory, and if not, their territory will run them. Sales professionals need to get the big picture of their territory. They need to take ownership and really begin to think like generals, and not just be out there fighting aimlessly. And this session will help us as sales professionals to do the grunge work. Within territory planning, there are three disciplines that we're going to talk about in this webinar that salespeople need to do. Territory A to Z evaluation, list group and prioritize, and week, month ahead planning. Let's look at each of these individually. First of all, part of territory planning, a vital part of it for salespeople, is territory A to Z evaluation. You know, I've talked to a lot of dealers, and some dealers have tried to bring how many accounts a salesperson has under control. Maybe they may have 150 accounts, which is maybe fairly manageable. I've met some salespeople that, in their territory, will have up to five, six, 700 accounts. And honestly, they're probably only calling on 50 of those, or really doing any... And there could be people partway down that list that are out of business or passed away, and they don't even know about it, okay? So it's very important, no matter how small or big a salesperson's territory is, that throughout the year, ongoing, they should be doing research, networking, documentation of everything that's going on in their account. They should regularly be walking through those accounts during lag time, or maybe a specific amount of hours a week to stay on top of all those accounts. Yeah, they've got to do all their day-to-day stuff, but they also need to find out what's going on in all of these accounts. Because an account that maybe seems to be a C account that's 150th on your list could be $5 million worth of potential business that you don't even know about. So there's so many opportunities. And so, if they're using their CRM, and if you have that, or going through your account list, that'll facilitate account penetration, qualification of their account, so they can clean up their account list. And then even target or strategic selection kind of evolves out of this as they're going through systematically. So what are the benefits of doing this duty? You know, I've worked with a few dealers that require their people, by the end of the year, to do A to Z evaluation and to meet with their manager, maybe sometime in December or early January, to go through and look at the potential of all their accounts and just kind of do an A to Z on all their accounts. Sad to say, even though that's a beautiful thing for a dealer to expect their salespeople to do, what happens a lot of times is then their salespeople just do that out of obedience or out of conformance instead of transformance. Instead of saying, you know, I need to be doing this all year long. This is good for me. This is good for coverage. This is good for my customers. I need to know who's out there and get my arms around this because I'm the only one that can get that information. You can't buy that list anywhere. Instead, they were just kind of at the end of the year going, oh man, it's November. I better do this to get my boss off my case. I'll make up some numbers and guess on some stuff because they really hadn't done the A to Z. You know, knowledge is power. And if a salesperson is continually working their territory, they're going to find new opportunities. They're going to cover their territory better. They're going to truly show consultative interest and build relationships with their customers. Territory A to Z is critical. I believe it's a never-ending part of being a sales professional. It's a moving target. And you know, here's a sad truth. Territory planning and A to Z evaluation is one of those things that a salesperson could actually get away with not doing for a while. But it'll catch up with them and it'll bite them if they don't. Here's the next part of territory planning that's really important. Listing, grouping, and prioritizing. If you haven't done this as a team, it's best to do as a team with management. But if needed, just do it for yourself. And that is to define your account grouping criteria. In other words, you know, define what an A account, a B account, a C account, and a D account is. That can include sales volume, margin, potential, maybe market or product focus areas that you say, these are the key kind of customers that we want to go after. So that makes it an A account. Or maybe the competitive situation, the accounts that are under attack or accounts that you want to make sure your competition doesn't get. So defining the criteria of A, B, C, D accounts is really important. And I think it's great if that's done as a team because then you get this rational approach to really understanding your total market and where your focus is as a company. And again, those are just guideline definitions. They're not hard, fast rules that say if the account is 5,000 or more, it's a B account. You know, those are guidelines to really help make some decisions because every account, every territory, every situation is a little different and you need to tap into the wisdom of your salespeople. And then document. Once you define them, then document guidelines for call frequency. Some people call this par value. And link that with your calendar to say, okay, an A account, I should typically call on them once a week, for example. Or a B account, at least once a month, et cetera. But the thing is, even if it's an A account, that particular account, the salesperson has to decide based on those guidelines whether they should call on them once a week. Maybe that customer doesn't want that. Maybe that would actually antagonize them. So you got to just look at all your territory, do the A to Z, and then list, group, and prioritize. Invest the time to apply this to all the accounts in your territory or in your realm of responsibility. Maybe take a Saturday or a few scheduled days and just do the grunge work of this. And then each sales professional can incorporate this into the future as they do A to Z evaluation, and it just continues to flow. And then you're in control of your territory instead of just out there knocking on doors and scrambling. Now, this next part of territory planning is really important. And this is a little different than just call reporting, which is kind of developing history of what you did. This is proactive. Okay? Even though call reporting is important, what I'm proposing here is that salespeople do week and month ahead planning. Where on Friday, they're saying, okay, who am I going to call on next week? Who am I going to call on this month? What parts of my territory am I going to work? And then if you're going to be in the northern part of your territory on the second week of the month, then do some prospecting while you're there. Plan some visits with some key customers. Pre-call plan for those visits. See, we've got to work our territory instead of just getting up on Monday and say, okay, I've got a couple of people that emailed me and I'm just going to go out there and just make some calls. Okay? So, be prepared to really lay out your week and month ahead planning. Once you do this, your calendar starts populating itself and you're working weeks and months ahead. Of course, you might have some flexibility in your schedule, but this way, you're systematically covering everything and making sure that you don't miss it. And be prepared to review that with your manager. This allows them to be involved in the outcome-affecting activities that are producing the results that you have. It's all about living by your calendar, planning your work, and working your plan. So, let me summarize your proactive planning action for territory planning. In summary, it's just to implement or utilize your CRM, if you have that, or other tools to assure these disciplines. A to Z evaluation of all your accounts. That should be an ongoing thing. Listing, grouping, and prioritizing of your accounts. You know, deciding if they're A, B, C, or counts, or however you want to group and prioritize them as a company and as an individual. And then week or month ahead call and travel planning. And I think what will happen is when you really put territory planning into place, what will happen is time management issues will rear their ugly head and you'll realize, you know, I need to get my time management under control. I need to organize my day-to-day and my weekly activities. So, doing these territory planning disciplines will help you realign and readjust your time management. Time management is one of those things that just seems to be so vague and people don't really know what that means. And it's really just doing some good fundamental disciplines and living by your calendar. Okay? The second of these three vital planning disciplines is account strategic planning. Now, please don't confuse this with territory strategy. What I'm saying is once you do your A to Z and once you kind of get your territory strategized, then what I'm proposing is that you look at some specific accounts and you start working those specific accounts. So, let me give you kind of a foundational understanding of this. You know, I came across this quote some time ago by George Bernard Shaw and I love it. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want. And if they can't find them, they make them. See, that's what this is about. It's about salespeople taking control of their territory. Now, just to give you a big picture, here is the sales lifeline. This is one of the key models in the four pillars training that I do. By definition, the sales lifeline is the total sales activities timeline throughout the life of long-term customers. I understand as an equipment dealer, most of your customers are long-term repeat customers. So, what we have to make sure is that the salesperson knows what their total sales activities are. So, if you look on the left side of this lifeline, marketing is one of those functions that I was originally talking about. Territory evaluation and listing and grouping and prioritizing, believe it or not, is part of a salesperson's marketing function, where they know who's out there. They know who the key opportunities are. They know where the potential is. And they've organized their activities. That seems like a time management thing, but what it really is, is a marketing function that so many times salespeople aren't doing on the front end of their selling. And that also includes research, networking, and prospecting of customers. So, they're stirring up opportunities, and they're marketing. Now, here's a beautiful thing that happens when they're doing that. Okay? That identifies new customers. When they go A to Z through their customer list, and they religiously every week or every few weeks are making some calls through their list of accounts, however many accounts they have, I'll tell you what, they're going to call customers, and a customer is going to go, wow, your timing is impeccable. I can't believe you called me, because we're actually looking for a wheel loader right now. We've got a couple skid steers that we need for an emergency job. That kind of stuff's going to happen. Not only are you going to identify opportunities, but you might even identify new customers as you do that. Now, what that does, it gets us into the heart of this and the very center of the sales lifeline, and this is the guts of what we do as salespeople every day. The selling function. The selling part of it. Strategic and tactical selling. And so, that cycle begins, and throughout that cycle, we're making numerous interactions with the customer to where ultimately, through that cycle, we open a relationship and lock a piece of business, lock a sale. And then, throughout the life of long-term customers, that continues. They call us back a couple weeks later, or we follow up with them, and they need a couple more pieces of equipment, or they need an undercarriage repair. That selling cycle continues throughout the life of long-term customers. And then, it evolves into the serving mode. And that's a beautiful thing, where we're servicing accounts, following up with them, protecting them, and reselling our value, and hopefully maximizing and penetrating the accounts, and even get to the point where we're managing their business, and helping to forecast their needs, and even restructuring our company to serve them. Here's what I want you to see. Once we get into the serving mode, then it's real easy to then be just maintaining our business, and responding to incoming opportunities, and quotes, and the selling function, and maybe not do the marketing, and not do those other planning disciplines, because our territory's running us, and we're just responding to the emails that are coming in. Very, very important that a salesperson, and I spend a lot of time when I do in-depth training on all of these aspects of the sales lifeline, but for today, I want you to see the big picture of what sales people need to do. Now, if we go right into the very heart of this, the selling function, I kind of like to use a football analogy to help you understand strategy versus tactical selling. If you look at the left side of this football field, this is where you kind of receive an opportunity. You know, when you go out there in your prospect, in your market, and you identify a particular opportunity, or a need that a customer has, and then ultimately, we're trying to move that down the field, and then get a touchdown, lock in that piece of business. This is a selling cycle. That could take an hour with rental, or something, or it could take six months to even years with some major accounts. Unfortunately, a lot of times, salespeople kind of just do a low percentage play. They just go in there and say, I'm just going to call on this guy and just see what happens, and they do the Hail Mary or the bomb. But what I want you to see is that throughout that cycle, there are numerous interactions that are happening with a customer. That's where tactical selling takes place, which we'll talk about in the last part of this webinar. But tactical selling is what happens in each of those unique interactions. So we need to prepare and execute highly effective, planned selling. What's your game plan, and then how are you going to execute? What plays are you going to call on the field to move it down? Is it a running play or a passing play? What's your strategy, and then how are you going to execute that tactically? Well, then if you step back and look at big picture here, from when you identify a customer opportunity to when you actually lock in that deal, of course there are numerous tactical interactions. But selling strategy is your plan for the selling cycle, your game plan to move the ball down the field and to move it forward. So we'll talk about tactical later, but right now I want to just zero in on the strategic part of this. So if we go back to the sales lifeline, strategic selling is your plan for the selling cycle. It's where once you identify a customer and you list group and prioritize and you evaluate your territory, you make those calls, you research and network and get in front of customers, you identify an opportunity. Then you don't just go out there and just make a bunch of calls and scramble. What you want to do is step back and come up with a game plan for each of those accounts. Now, I love this additional quote here that I put in here from Sun Tzu from The Art of War. It's ancient 6th century BC wisdom. And this is straightforward. Outmaneuver the enemy before the first battle and then fight to win. I love this because that's basically saying do strategic account planning and then be ready with your offense and prepare and execute your offense and go out there to win. Don't just go out there and start shooting, okay? But don't just show up and throw up or make a whole bunch of calls. That's the erroneous thinking when a manager says, I want you to make 20 calls a day. Well, then the salesperson is going to go out and make 20 calls a day. That's like going out and saying, I just want you to shoot your gun 50 times, you know, or whatever. You've got to have a plan. You've got to outmaneuver the enemy. Now, let me make an important statement. This kind of strategic thinking in all of our accounts, we should be doing that in every account. Where once we identify an opportunity, say, okay, who are the calls? Who are the people I need to meet with? What are the actions that I need to take incrementally, my tactical selling, to get the ball down the field, to move this thing towards closure and locking in a piece of business? You know, what is the plan? We should be doing that for all the accounts. But what I found is sometimes that's a little hard for salespeople to make that transition. So what I like to say is, okay, let's at least start the discipline by walking before we run. And if you follow the 80-20 rule, 80% of your business or profit comes from 20% of your accounts. Okay, understanding that thinking, then what I would like to suggest is to say, you know what, if that's the case, then let's just pick a few. If you have 200 accounts, just pick three or four of them that you're going to focus in on and prove out what I'm saying about strategy. Okay, just pick a few accounts. I tell this to dealers all the time. Again, you should be doing strategic planning for all your accounts, but let's follow the 80-20 rule and let's just focus on a few accounts. Let's pick a few major opportunities that fit with your company, that fit with what you bring to the table that you say, you know what, man, they're doing tons of business with multiple dealers. They've got a mixed fleet, but they should be buying from us. Man, we've got branches near a lot of their locations that they're working. They love our equipment. Why aren't they buying from us? I've talked to some of their operators. I don't understand that. So pick a few of those accounts. You know, I'm suggesting maybe three to five of them and do strategic account planning. Now, what we're going to look at here real quickly is a tool, and I've got an Excel tool. It's tool 3.1E that I offer to help salespeople do formal strategic planning. See, one thing is saying, oh, I'm going to pick these accounts and call on them every week. I'm saying that, no, that's just hope. Hope is not a strategy. I want you to pick these accounts and then say, okay, I'm going to do all my other day-to-day stuff, but for these accounts, I'm going to come out with a step-by-step projected plan, and I'm going to plan that work and work that plan. And this Excel tool will be a real formal way to help them do that. Now, you don't have to use the Excel tool. If you have a CRM that can have an opportunities function, then you could just flag a strategic or a conquest account and then beef up all the information and then come up with a step-by-step plan and work it within your call reporting tool. That would be ideal. But let me just show you the components of these, and then you can interpolate how it applies to your particular dealership. The first eight tabs of this strategic account planning tool are really research and evaluation components. So basically, we're just saying, get some basic information about this account. Why did you pick it? Maybe get it approved by your management. Do an overview, maybe on the notes page of that account in your CRM or on this second tab of the Excel tool. Why did you pick this? Highlight bullet points or brief notes and comments to provide a snapshot of the big picture and situation. What are some problems, objections, opportunities, maybe the relationship status or reputation that you have with that customer? Maybe even their brand preferences or loyalties or the competitive situation or position. Maybe your competitor or salesperson quit and went to another company and now there's a new salesperson. This may be the opportunity for you to get in there. Just bullet points of what's going on in this account and why you picked it as a key major strategic account. Who are all the players on the customer team? Who are all the players on your team? This is huge because the bigger the opportunity, the bigger the account, chances are there's going to be more than just one contact. There's going to be numerous people on your team and their team that are going to have to make this happen and you're going to have to be the quarterback. So who are those players? Here's what I found. When salespeople do this research and they start qualifying and working these major accounts that they picked, they say, okay, Bob Smith is my contact and his brother, Sam, I don't really know him but he could be the one that's kind of boxing us out. You start going through and look at some of the key players, all of a sudden you're saying, I need to call on that person. I need to have lunch with that person. I need to try to get them to take a tour of our branch. So when you start doing the gathering of this research and evaluation information, what happens is a plan starts unfolding in your brain. Who's the competition? What are they doing? What are their activities, strengths, weaknesses? What was your past account sales summary? Maybe five years ago you were doing $100,000 with them and then it tapered off. What happened? Or maybe they do a lot of service with you but they're not buying any new equipment. Or maybe they've got a lot of eight-year-old equipment that really is ready for upgrade and your information tells you that, man, based on that, it's go time. Or UCC data or other things that you're just gathering information and laying out some goals and maybe doing some what-if analysis. Now once you do those first eight tabs of activity, whether you do it in your CRM or using this formal, very simple Excel tool to kind of gather your thinking, the next two tabs are huge. And that is where you start developing your plan and monitor it and be accountable to the plan. And the first step is to look at all those eight things that you gathered, all that information that you beefed up in your Excel tool or your CRM, and start brainstorming ideas. Okay, based on that, I need to call on this person. Maybe we need to give them a tour of the manufacturer. And because there's a big event coming out, we could take them to that. Whatever. And you just kind of strategize individually or with your team. And this next thing is the key to all of this. And this is the piece that a lot of times people don't do, but it's the most important thing. And that is based on all that research, all of those ideas that you have. Now, what's your game plan from the tower? This is what football teams in the NFL do all the time. Before the game, they're looking at the competition, they're looking at film, they're studying, and then they're deciding what kind of plays are we going to call in the game? What is our offense? What is our defense going to be? How are we going to move that thing down the field? And if we get into the last two minutes, what's our two-minute offense? They're looking at all that. They're taking all that information and turning it into strategies and actions, a game plan of tactical moves and plays that you're going to call. Now, granted, that can change. You may call an audible on the line of scrimmage, but I'm telling you, that's no excuse for not having a good game plan. This is why Peyton Manning on the sidelines is flipping through his playbook, looking at what their game plan is so he knows what plays to call when he gets back out there. And then once you get this plan laid out, then you just manage that step by step. You plan your work and work your plan. Let me summarize this simple but very powerful concept. First of all, consider what type or which account you want to pick. Some of them maybe you need to protect. Some are accounts that you get a little bit out of. Maybe you're getting some CCE stuff, but you're not getting any of the heavy stuff or whatever, depending on your company. And then there may be accounts that you say, man, these are huge and we're not getting anything out of them. We must prospect. So pick some accounts. Involve sales management in the selection and the progress of those accounts. Now, here's what I suggest. I suggest three to seven accounts. Again, you're going to have to do all your other day-to-day stuff. These are your 401k or your SEP accounts that are going to pay the bills a couple years down the road. Pick three to seven accounts, depending on what...some people pick more, some people pick two. Okay? But kind of work that out with your manager. And then either use the template that I will provide at the end of this session, which is I will make available to you, or just do this discipline in your CRM. Large accounts, just keep this in mind. Large accounts usually involve the team. So as the salesperson, if you are the salesperson in this situation, you're going to be the quarterback. You're going to be orchestrating the resources of your company, and you're going to be working with other divisions of your company to make sure this happens. And then do it on purpose. Don't forsake your other daily regimens. And don't get so caught up in this that you're chasing after fantasies, okay? You got to still pick the low-hanging fruit, and you got to keep the monthly numbers coming in that your management wants. But what I'm saying is, take a portion of your time and invest it into the future. Don't just let your territory run you or the economy. When it goes up, your sales go up. When the economy goes down, your sales go down. You got to drive this and do it on purpose, all right? And by the way, these kind of accounts, they don't just land in your lap. You got to reel these in. So you're going to have to be...the bigger they are, the longer they take. But you got to be tenacious and patient. But the good news is, if you just do this simple discipline...you know, you might look at this and go, no, this is so basic. Just pick a few accounts and work them. Yeah. And the dealers that I have worked with that have said, yeah, why haven't we been doing this? Yeah, we've kind of been doing it, but we haven't done it formally, and we haven't been very disciplined. And next thing you know, a year goes by, and we really haven't done anything on these selected accounts. But the dealers that say, we're going to implement this discipline, and it's going to be a part of our culture, a year later, 18 months later, two years later, those accounts that they picked are paying the bills. Those accounts that they picked are helping them grow market share, even when the economy or the market is shrinking. This is huge, folks. I don't take these webinars lightly. I'm not just throwing you a bunch of tips. I'm saying these are some fundamental planning disciplines, territory planning, strategic planning, and then finally, really one of the most important ones, pre-call tactical planning. I want to challenge you to think strategically and act tactically. The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win. The days of winging it are over. Customers want professional salespeople who are focused and prepared. Tactical skill is critical in face-to-face selling, and so we're going to offer a pre-call planning tool that you can standardize and use as a framework for call preparation. This will equip sales professionals to prepare and execute highly effective sales calls that get action and that get results. Understand brilliant execution of your offense and your defense demands a process that will allow formal pre-call planning and ongoing practice. What we're going to look at here is based on my book, which is a part of our training called The Sell Process. That's actually available. If you look at this, you say, man, I want to get better at this. That book is available on my website if you're interested. Immediate tactical selling must be aggressively engaged in. We've got to get on the offense. Skillful prospecting is preeminent. In these customer interactions that we have, that's, again, where sales are won or lost. We need to improve our tactical selling. If I go back to the sales lifeline, just to help you understand what I mean when I talk about tactical selling, when you kind of think of that football analogy, tactical selling is your plan for each individual sales call. What we need is a process. What we need is a framework to help us prepare. I'm not talking about just some cutesy ideas or Don Butcher giving you weird stuff to say. What I'm talking about is to have a framework and a process that will help us prepare and execute our selling. The sell process is a simple but profound process that will help you do that. In the last part of this webinar together, we're going to just slow it down a little bit and take some time to go into the locker room, so to speak. We're going to unfold the sell process to help you get it initially in your head. We're going to walk through our offense slowly, step by step, and then after each step of the process, we'll go back to the chalkboard here and we'll fine-tune our understanding of each step of the process. Keep this in mind. You play like you practice. We can learn our offense, and we're going to do that this morning. I'm going to introduce this. In the next half hour, I'll introduce this. Typically, though, in a training event, I spend an entire day working on our offense and fine-tuning it because brilliant execution requires that you run your plays and your patterns, so to speak, over and over until you get game, until it becomes instinctive and automatic. That is a very vital planning discipline. So many times, and I've seen this because for the last 20 years, I've worked with salespeople and I've seen literally thousands of role plays, and I've worked with many, many salespeople out on the field. What I've seen and observed, and if you're a sales manager or a leader, you've probably seen this too, where the salesperson goes in the call and they're scrambling uphill. They're getting grilled. They're getting stuff thrown at them, and they feel like they're defending their price or they're defending their company or defending their service department or whatever, and they're not on the offense. Many times, part of the culprit of that is that when they go into the sales call, they don't even know why they're there. They don't have an objective. They're just kind of going in to see what happened. If you don't know why you're there, they don't know why you're there. So what we need is an offense. What we need is a process to help us really understand what happens in each of those dynamic interactions. Now again, I want to clarify this. We're not talking about strategy now. We've kind of moved on from that. Strategy is important. Territory planning is important. Strategic planning in our accounts is important, but what takes all that to the street? Tactical selling. You could have a great strategy, but man, when you get out on the field, you've got to run your offense. You've got to make those big plays. So that's what we're looking at now. We're looking at our tactical offense, the process that happens in that dynamic interaction. Let's start with this premise. Would you accept the fact that when somebody buys something, when somebody's looking to rent or looking to do some service or whatever, that they go through some sort of a process? The customer is going to go through a process to get to the center of the target and to get what they want. That begins with an attraction to consider. First of all, nobody's going to buy from you if they don't even know you're there, if they don't know that you exist. That's where marketing and your website and by all means, that's where cold calling and we're following up with customers. That's where salespeople come in. Salespeople are vital to this process. Sometimes customers think, oh, they're just bugging me. But the idea of a consultant, a salesperson, is they're in there to help the customer get what they want. They're in there to help the customer to see what their needs. Sometimes customers don't even know what they need. We're just there to attract them to us and to maybe some things that will help them. You know what? Once they see your company, your product, or what you bring to the table, the first thing they're thinking is, okay, how's this going to help me? They're thinking about interest in sales. Now, this is really important because they're not thinking about your commission. They're not thinking about your quotas that you need to reach. They're not thinking about that it's the end of the month and you've got certain numbers so that your owners are happy. You're thinking about, how's this going to help me? It's all about the customer. Sometimes I think we sit in our sales meetings and get all focused on us. We go and say, man, we would really like to do more business with you. Well, who's that about? That's about us instead of about their problems, their needs. Understand their process is interest in sales. They're looking for things that are going to benefit them. If they see something that we have, if they see services and products that we provide that benefits them, then they're going to want it. This is logical. Ultimately, they're going to be convicted to take action. This is important. They're going to take action. We can't make them take action. It would make my job as a sales trainer a whole lot easier if we could. I could just teach people how to twist people's arm and make them buy. That doesn't work, man. I hate that kind of selling mentality and those tricks and the things they do when you go to... If you've ever gone to one of those timeshare things where they try to sell you timeshares, they try to twist your arm and manipulate you. You're going to make the decision if you want to. You remember the old adage, you can take a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. I always add something to that. However, you can put salt in their oats. We can't force somebody to buy from us. They're going to go through this process to find benefits for themselves based on their interests and they're ultimately going to decide if they're going to take action based on their convictions. They're going to get what they want. They're going to get to the center of the target. What's our job? Our job is to help them. Our job is to sell, to help them so that we get to the center of the target at the same time. That begins with, what are you going to say when you walk in the door that will attract them? Not your dog and pony show, not proving your case or making your closing arguments at the beginning. What we're doing is we're just saying, what am I going to say to start that will get the ball in play? What are some questions that I need to ask to find out what their interest is? I can't leverage my company. I can't leverage my product. I can't leverage the advantages or the benefits of my product if I don't know what a benefit is to this particular person that I'm dealing with. How am I going to leverage that? You got to do step two. What am I going to say to start? What are some questions I'm going to ask? This is systematic and logical. If I follow this simple process, it's not always step by step. It's very dynamic, but it's logical. If we can somehow understand this process and get to the center of the target and help them get conviction, then we're going to truly be a consultative salesperson. We're going to get action and get the results that we want to go into. All of that is based on our interaction in this process. Our interaction in this process. By the way, professionals, I love that word, interaction. If you want to get action, you have to be a master at the interaction, at the process. Upon the chalkboard, I put this tool. It's one of the primary tools of my training, a cell pre-call planning tool, your offense. It's a simple tool, but it's a powerful tool that will help salespeople take that cell process that we just talked about. If you put that in a different format, what it becomes is an outline or a framework to help you figure out, okay, for this tactical call, when I get on the line of scrimmage and I look at what's happening in this call, how am I going to run this call? What is my objective? First of all, who am I talking to? What kind of a person are they? Then what am I trying to get done based on what happened in the previous call, et cetera? Then what am I going to say? What question am I going to ask? How am I going to match that up with our benefits? Then how am I going to lock action based on that objective? It all kind of begins with saying, okay, how am I going to run this call tactically? Writing out your objective, what you're going to say, questions you'll ask, and how you'll articulate your value can provide a framework for better call execution. This tool is the worksheet that what we'll do in the training event is everybody will pick an actual target account, and then together, we walk through each step of this, and we learn each step, and we go to the work binder, and we discuss it, and then they actually apply it to the actual call that they're making. Every call is different, so the salesperson just uses this outline and this framework to help them prepare and execute their call. Brilliant sales call execution versus winging it is what we're talking about. When you get those precious interactions with customers, you've got to say the right thing. You've got to ask the right questions. You've got to come off as a consultative partner and prove why your product and company still have value. The only way you can do that is with pre-call planning. It can't just depend on having the silver tongue when you go out there. We need to maximize every call and every opportunity. Let's start with the top of this thing, filling out for a particular call who you're calling on, what are you selling to them or whatever, and then for this next tactical call, wherever you are in the cycle, it could be early in the cycle or late in the cycle, what is my sales call action-oriented objective? This is the first thing that a salesperson needs to do when they pre-call plan. Let's go to the chalkboard and talk about that top part of this tool, sales call objectives. First and foremost, we need to have a realistic but aggressive purpose for the call. Sometimes salespeople say, well, my objective is to get a purchase order. Maybe that's not realistic. Maybe that's not where you are in this. Maybe you need to get another meeting set up or whatever. I don't want us to just go in there with this pie-in-the-sky thing. I want us to be able to say, what's the first down? What is that action that I want to get that will move this thing in the right direction that's aggressive but yet is realistic? Again, that could be numerous things. It could be getting another meeting set up. It could be getting a demo. Sometimes I think we get an objective in our mind and we cut ourselves short. Maybe the guy's ready to buy and we're thinking, okay, I want to do a demo. Maybe that's a waste of our time and maybe they're ready to sign on the dotted line. I want you to remember, it has to be aggressive but it has to be realistic. The next part of this is really important. Step back and get the big picture. Consider your overall strategy in the account and then identify what is the first down. What's that incremental objective for this particular call? Keep in mind, again, I'm driving this home because it's so important. It must be action-oriented. What do you want the customer to do? I guess I'll put it this way. If you don't get the customer to do something, if you don't get them to move forward or take some action or agree to something or commit to something or hopefully buy something or at least buy into something, then you didn't really sell. You're at the risk of just being a professional visitor instead of a professional salesperson. Folks, when you go into a sales call, even though I'm all about building relationship, but man, I think sometimes we've taken that too far to where we just stop and go, hey, got anything for me? How are you doing, man? What are you trying to buy? Just checking in, making the milk run, just making the rounds. Man, I think they're sick of salespeople doing that. Why are you there? What value are you bringing to them? How are you going to help make them money, save them money, anticipate future needs, share them information that will help them that they're not aware of? See, we've got to have an objective for the call. Now, I know that can change, but we just have to make sure that we test it and say, as evidenced by, what evidence are you going to get that you got the job done in that call? Let me give you a couple of examples of some things I've heard. I've heard salespeople say, well, my objective is to heal the relationship. As good as that sounds, do you kind of see the flaw in that because I don't know what that looks like. So you go to make the call and then you come back, oh, you know, I think we kind of healed the relationship. They seemed to be okay. I thought they were going to chew me up and spit me out, but it wasn't too bad. And no action. So what do you get done? So I always say, wait a minute, what's the evidence? If you heal the relationship that maybe was severed a few years ago, who knows, maybe they're not even thinking about that anymore. Maybe the person that you're dealing with forgot about that or wasn't even on board then. You don't even know any of that stuff. So to heal the relationship, you have to say, if the relationship is healed, what do I want the customer to do? To give you a list of equipment that you can quote or a current need that they have, you see the difference here? We want to get some action. I've also heard salespeople say this, this is a very common objective for a call that I've heard. I want to go in and prove that our machine is better than the other machine that they're looking at. You know what? You don't need to do that. That's part of the leverage step of the process. That's part of your job is to prove your value, but that's not your objective. See, your objective is, when and if you do that, what do you want the customer to do? What's the action that's going to result from you going in with a clear objective and getting it done? How are you going to take action on that? Okay, that's the first part of this planning, and the beautiful thing is, is when you start filling out this form, and you just fill out that top line up there, sales call, action oriented objective, it's amazing how that kicks everything into gear, because everything you do in that call is going to be dependent on what action you're trying to sell and what action you're trying to get done. One quick thing, though, keep in mind, that can change during the call. You may have to yell Omaha or whatever, call an audible on the line of the scrimmage, or kill, maybe you shouldn't yell that, but you may change, but understand you got to have a game plan, and you got to try to execute, nine times out of ten, when you come up with a good objective, that's the objective that you meet, because you miss every shot you don't take, and when you have a clear goal, then your chances of hitting that shot are better. Now, let's go to the, after we get that established, let's go to the first step of the sell process. Start. Start to attract. I want you to, first of all, think about this, what is the purpose of this first step of the process? It's simply to get the ball in play. It's simply to attract them to your objective, or to your company, it's not to put on your dog and pony show, it's not to get diarrhea of the mouth, and tell them everything, and ask questions and answer them and everything else, all you're trying to do is get the ball in play. And you know what? The truth of the matter is, this is a very important step and it's all yours, but less is better. Sometimes it's just a statement or a phrase, or just a simple question to get it started. So let's go to the chalkboard and let's talk about the start step, in this tactical pre-call planning that we're working on. First of all, I think the first consideration is small talk. Should you do it? Is it appropriate? I think it varies by situation, there are risks associated, you don't want to go on too long and just talk, talk, talk, or bring up controversial subjects or whatever. Small talk, some people, it's very important with customers, some customers really like small talk and it builds trust and relationship. Other customers, task oriented people, it's a waste of time, it's like look at this sales person in here shooting from the hip and talking about football, I don't give a rip about that or whatever. So we've got to consider that, but here's the key, this is what the start step is. The start step is the big talk. You know, small talk, take it or leave it, whatever, but what are you going to say when you walk in the door that will attract this individual? Don't leave that to chance, you want to tool that out, you want to look at their personality, look at your personality and say, in quotations, what am I going to say when I walk in the door? This is all yours, man, don't blow this part of the office, what are you going to say that will get it moving, that will get this thing going in the direction that you want? You want to decide how to set the focus and the direction on your objective. And remember this, keep this in mind, they're checking you out. The first 30 seconds of the call, they're deciding, should I let this person in here? First impressions, they're deciding if you're really a consultant, if you're really there for them, or if you're there just to waste their time or to talk about yourself and your company and your initiatives, instead of really understanding them. That's why this systematic and logical process, start, evaluate, the next step we're going to go into, once you get past this, is going to be where our consultative focus comes in so that we might need to change our tactical focus or our objective, because the process is systematic and logical. See, the start step, as important as it is, only lasts a few seconds. And then almost seamlessly, we're going to be into the next step. So what should the start look like? Well, it might be a question, a statement, a benefit, it could be just a real simple, you know, how did your operators view that demo? I mean, it could be that simple, it doesn't have to be cute or fancy, but it has to be appropriate for the situation. And you want to write it in quotations and you want to perfect it. Hear me on that. Just walking in the door and saying whatever comes to your brain or a couple ideas that you had is not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about taking your offense to a new level by writing it. If you want to get your game better, then you're going to have to work on your offense and you're going to have to do the grunge work, and that's why this webinar is all about pre-call planning as a vital planning discipline. The days of winging it are over. You don't want to just show up and throw up. You want to write it. Why write it? Well, writing makes you exact. If you don't write it, you can't fix it. Writing gets it in your head. Writing helps you adapt it. It just does so many powerful things. So hear me, I'm not just giving you this framework. I'm saying use this framework in your car or in your office to prepare. You don't have to spend an hour prepping for every call. Maybe five minutes to say, okay, what's my objective? How am I going to start off? You do this process and you prepare before a call, and you will be amazed at how much better your execution is. And you'll also find that some calls are so huge, so critical, so important, that maybe you should spend a half hour, 45 minutes prepping. Especially if you're doing a joint call with somebody, you might need to sit down with them and fill this out and say, okay, how are we gonna start this? Who's gonna say it? What are we gonna say? And then you write it out and go, well, them's fighting words. That's probably the worst thing to say. I don't think we need that last line. And you're gonna keep working this and wordsmithing it so that when you go in there, man, you nail it. And you say the right thing. Okay, that's the first step of this process. And like I said, it only lasts a few seconds, but it might take you a lot of prep to make sure that based on all the scenarios and everything that's going on, that you say the perfectly right thing to get on the offense and to get control of this call. And then that leads seamlessly to the next step. Evaluate. See, it's all about the customer. It's not about us going in there and then presenting our brains out. It's evaluate to discover the customer's interest. See, I don't know what's going on in his brain. I don't know what's going on in his heart. I don't know what's happening in there. So I need to ask more questions and shut up. I need to listen. I need to find out what's really going on. This is a very important step. So let's go to the chalkboard and talk about our vital pre-call planning discipline and how this step comes into play. The evaluate step. First of all, keep in mind, the focus is on the customer. We wanna be a consultant. It's not about us, it's about them. And when we focus on their business, their customers, their situation, then we're really gonna connect with them and then they're gonna own the decision because they got there on their own, see? So we need to ask well-prepared, well-crafted, open-ended and closed-ended questions, especially emphasizing the open-ended questions. And you know what? Believe it or not, those are really hard to come up with on the fly. A lot of technical people end up asking closed-ended questions. So were you having a problem with this? So are you interested in this? And those are closed-ended questions that don't give us hardly any information. So how do you ask open-ended ones? Well, you do it in your pre-call planning. You wanna take your game to another level, you need to use this tool and prepare. And say, okay, what do I need to find out? How am I gonna ask that question? How will I word that so that I get maximum feedback and dialogue and interaction? So I wanna prepare some questions that will engage the customer in a dynamic dialogue, not a monologue, a dialogue. And I'm gonna need an inquisitive mind because every question leads to another question. I'm like, okay, I wonder what that meant. And so we dig deep for facts and emotions and we're engaged, we're actively listening and taking notes. And the customer, I'll tell you what, they're gonna spill their guts for the most part. I mean, some people are really close to the vest and I understand that. But that's no reason not to do this. Most of the time, when they realize it's about them and that you're truly listening versus going in with your own agenda and your own dog and pony show and you're listening and you're taking notes and you're asking about their business and their situation and their application, it just opens up, man. We've gotta do this on purpose. We have to have an inquisitive mind, we need to listen. And so what I always tell salespeople is ask more questions and shut up. I know that seems pretty strong. But whenever I do training, I always say, anytime I say, ask more questions, I want everybody in the room to reply and shut up. And we'll do that over and over and over. Every time I say, ask more questions, the whole group goes and shut up. And what I'm trying to do is brainwash them. I'm trying to clean their brain out from all this other rhetoric and product information that we have and say, you know what? Listen to the customer. I want them to leave with a little Don Butcher on their shoulder going, shut up. Quit guessing. You have no idea what that dude's thinking, okay? Ask more questions and shut up. Tell you what, maybe some of the best advice you're gonna get in this quick webinar is to shut up and to really let the customer talk. See, don't skip step two. It's very important to figure out what your objective is and what you're gonna say based on that when you walk in the door. And then almost seamlessly, you get into this dialogue with a customer and discover their interest and get information. Because the only way you can go to this next step of the process is if you do that. Leverage to match discovered desires with benefits. Now, this is important. Look at what that says. Leverage to match discovered desires. Where do we discover the desires? It goes right back to step two, see? That's where we find out what their desires are. And then all we're doing in this step, it's academic, man. This is a piece of cake. This is gonna make your job easier. Instead of just guessing and presenting your brains out and just hoping something hits with machine gun selling, we're gonna aim for the heart. We're gonna do bow and arrow selling and hit right to the heart by matching what we discover in the evaluate step. It just frees you up. Instead of you going, I don't know how this presentation's gonna go, you don't have to worry about that. Just go in there and let the customer tell you by asking questions. Now, I wanna make one thing clear. Whenever you look at this leverage step, and we're gonna go to the chalkboard to talk about how to do this step, but I wanna make something clear. You don't just start and then evaluate, evaluate, evaluate, evaluate, evaluate, and it's like, okay, now it's my turn and we're leveraged. It's a very dynamic process. It may look like this. Start, evaluate, evaluate, leverage, and you kinda match something up and say, that's exactly what our company does. And then evaluate, leverage, evaluate, evaluate, trial lock, evaluate, leverage, trial lock, evaluate, lock. So it's a very dynamic process, but it's systematic and logical, and that's where the start, evaluate, leverage, lock, the sell process helps give you a framework to prepare and execute yourself. Okay, now the leverage step is a step that involves all your product and application knowledge when you go to your manufacturer and learn about your product, and that's all important. A lot of times, that's the only thing that's done for new hires, though, is that they just learn product and benefits and all that. Understand the leverage step is in the heart of the process. It's not just a philosophy where we go in and push our point and build our case. It's part of this dynamic interaction that is matched up after the evaluate step. So in this step, yes, this is when you present your value solution, but it's all about matching it with what you discover in the evaluate step. Yes, you wanna sell your product benefits. If you have them, plow on them, okay? We're in a world economy, and many times, this is not your ace in the hole. This may not be your key card that you lay down because head-to-head, you may be the same as your competitor, but if you have product advantages on a particular product or particular size of equipment or whatever, sell it, okay? I always say the closer your product looks like your competitor's, the better your selling skill has to be, okay? And many times, our product is very similar, so this is why you gotta sell the house. You gotta sell your dealership benefits. You gotta sell what your branch, your company, your service, and you bring to the table, and that oughta fire you up to be persuasive and to be enthusiastic. I love the word enthusiasm. It actually comes from two Greek words, n-e-n, theos, and the word theos means God. So in essence, the word enthusiasm means God in you, where you get the big picture. You're there to help them. You see things from a higher perspective that they do, and you're in there as the answer to their prayers. See, when you go in with that kind of confidence and clarity, you're not just being cocky, and you're not just twisting their arm. You're going in to serve them, to help them, to solve problems for them. And so yeah, if you do the sell process correctly, and you don't just go in and present your brains out and push your wares and your product, but if you follow, start, evaluate, then leverage, it's a beautiful thing. And at that point, you can prepare and utilize whatever appropriate sales tools you have, and you can go in and build your case in a powerful, effective way. And you know what? If they've already bought into it, if they've already spoken how it benefits and affects them because you asked good questions and you were listening, then this step becomes so much easier. This step just becomes a natural part of what you do. Start, evaluate, and leverage. And you're just taking your company features or your product features, whichever ones might be the hot buttons that you've anticipated, and then you're just matching it up based on the person that you're dealing with. And that's really important. You wanna sell benefits to that particular person in that particular company at that particular time. And that leads us to the best part of this whole process, the bottom line, lock. Lock to confirm their convictions. See, they gotta get there on their own. You're just confirming it. You're not twisting their arm or forcing them. You're just confirming conviction and agreeing to action. That's very important. You don't wanna just leave it floating. You wanna get them to act. You wanna get them to move forward. So, let's go to the chalkboard and talk about this very important step, the lock step. First, it's as imperative. You need to secure commitment. You need to get action. Now, I know sometimes the only thing you can feasibly get is a verbal agreement. I understand that. I'd prefer to get some action or I'd prefer to get a purchase order or a commitment of some type. You gotta be realistic, but you wanna be more aggressive on this. Sometimes I think we're too wishy-washy. You wanna get action. Now, be alert, because the customer will send you buying signals. And sometimes I think we miss them. I've seen so many veterans miss buying signals. The customer goes, so, you really think this machine's better than the other one? Ding, ding, ding, ding. When they ask a question like that, it's go time. Don't say, yes, let me prove it to you one more time. Ask for the order. Ask for the commitment. Or if the customer says, so, do you have these in stock? I mean, will I be able to get this by Friday when I need it? Ding, ding, ding, ding. The customer just gave you a signal or maybe they lit up non-verbally or maybe they said, well, you know, we kinda like doing business with you guys. Man, when they say that stuff, don't just say, oh, thank you. We like doing business with you too. No, say, thank you, we appreciate that. So, let's keep it going. Let's get this off your plate today. So, when they send you a signal, man, make it happen. See, my philosophy is lock early and lock often. Don't hesitate to lock. See, sometimes when people see the sell process start, evaluate, leverage, lock, well, they say, well, lock is the end. It's the last part of the process. And rightly so. You gotta nail it down and finish up the process. You don't wanna drive to the bucket and not pull it through the hoop. You gotta finish. But don't let that fool you into thinking that locking is just for the end. See, the beauty of trial locking is that you can trial lock throughout the process and it lets you know where you are. It lets you know how responsive they are. It might stir up the real objection. It might qualify them as the customers. If you don't know if they're really the decision maker, the best way to find out is ask for the order. And if they're not, they'll say, well, let me run that up a flagpole. See, trial lock early and often. Now, I'm not talking about to be a pit bull and antagonize them. Don't get me wrong. This is a very dynamic process and you have to keep it in harmony. But I think sometimes we err on the wrong side of this and we're just like, well, I don't wanna be pushy because I don't like people being pushy to me. And depending on the kind of person you deal with, maybe they like it being pushy. Maybe they like decisive, assertive people and that's who they wanna do business with. So you wanna keep that process appropriate for the person you're dealing with and keep it in harmony. And there are some techniques that you can use. I hate to even use the word technique because it seems like it's manipulative, but no, this is never meant to be manipulation. But you could use an assumptive lock where you just say, I'll tell you what, I'll call back the office. We'll make sure that machine's prepped and ready and we'll have it out to you by Friday. You don't ask, you just kinda move forward and if they don't balk, you're on your way. Or maybe a minded decision. Say, do you need that Friday or would you want us to just get that to you Monday morning? Yeah, Monday's fine, we're off to the races. Or maybe you summarize and say, you know what, as we look at this, this has got better dig for us. The cycle time on this machine, we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to your manager that this is gonna save you money. It's gonna pay for itself within the next two years. So we use those techniques to lock it in and to get action. But the key to this, and this is really important, is once you get to the lock step, you're done. Don't say anything else. Just ask and let it do the work. Silence is powerful. This is really important. Since we're doing a quick chalkboard, I don't wanna let this one slide by. If you ask, let's say you ask for the order. You say, let's go ahead and get this machine on order and we'll get it all prepped up and ready to go. And the customer looks at you and says, and there's this dead silence. And you're ready to pee your pants. You're like, you gotta say something else. I'll tell you what, don't say anything. Because if you do, and I think you know where I'm going with this. If you do say something, it's gonna take them off the hook. It's going to distract their thinking. And nine times out of 10, if not 10 times out of 10, when the salesperson says something again, it's a concession. Man, what a horrible negotiation stance. It makes you look scared. You come back and go, I'll tell you what, I think we could give you that 5% this time if we could go ahead and get this order because we really wanna move this machine. What? You just fell down the stairs when you didn't even have to. Because when you asked for the order, you didn't let it do the work. Start, evaluate, leverage, lock. This last of the three disciplines, pre-call planning, is really, without a doubt, one of the most important disciplines. All the three disciplines we looked at, territory planning disciplines, which is vital, and strategic account planning, vital. But pre-call planning is what takes all that to the street. I love what Bobby Knight said, and many coaches have said this. I think he said it as he was throwing a chair. The will to win is not nearly as important as the will to prepare to win. So since this is such a critical, vital part of our planning disciplines, I wanna challenge you to implement this tool and this framework into your dealership. And you know what, this is a vital part of my training, but whenever somebody does a webinar with me through AED, I make my stuff available, because I wanna help you. And I'm convinced that if you want more training and more help on this, that you'll go for it. But let's at least implement this and start getting your team to talk about this. By the way, I have a book that teaches this in great detail. So check out my website for that, because that may be helpful. You can get it as an e-book or as a hard copy book. Why do this? Why pre-call plan with this tool? Came up with eight really important reasons. We'll just go through these real quickly as we kind of wind down this webinar. First of all, pre-call planning will give you a better message. A better message. It'll be tailored to the customer. It'll be concise. It won't go down rabbit trails. It won't say offensive things. It's prepared. It's perfected. It's concise. It's absorbable. Man, this is huge. Better message. And I'll tell you what else it'll do. It'll make your calls shorter. Instead of going down paths you didn't wanna go down or missing stuff or forgetting stuff and then going off on tangents and spending two hours with a customer and not really getting anything done, it'll help your time management. It'll help you get right to the point. It'll help you focus. It'll help you discover the real issues. And it'll make your call shorter. And you know what? It might qualify the customer so you don't spin your wheels with somebody who's never gonna buy from you who's just shopping around. And the good news is, if they give you a stand-up meeting in the lobby and you really use the cell process and ask questions and listen, it might even make the calls longer, okay? They say, I'll give you 15 minutes and it ends up being two hours because you respect the customer. You respect their time, their pressures. This call is not about you. It's about them. And that's gonna present a professional, high-standard image for your dealership. For each of your salespeople, if you implement this as a standard tool, it'll provide structure for good selling habits. It's so easy for salespeople to go off on tangents or to know some of the disciplines, but in the day-to-day, they just kinda forget some of the basics and they don't run their offense and they kinda derail a little bit. This helps make sure that they, before every call, they prepare and execute. It provides structure. And this is cool. It's repeatable. See, throughout the cycle, every call that you make, anytime you're trying to get somebody else to do something you want them to do, every call is different. Every person is different. Every situation is different. But this same simple but profound process, start, evaluate, leverage, lock, gives you a framework that's repeatable. You can use this same process for any call. The thing is, Don Butcher's not telling you what to say. What I'm doing is I'm giving you a simple but powerful tool to help you figure out for this call with this person in this situation, how am I gonna run the interaction? What questions will I ask? How will I start it? You're just putting the framework there. It's repeatable. This is not a complicated tool. It's simple. And what's beautiful is if you implement it with your team, and they're all on the same page, it'll allow better team selling. Can you imagine how much better a joint call would be if you had a framework to prepare together and figure out who's gonna do what and how you're gonna run it so that you have your tactical plan, you've run your patterns, just like Peyton Manning runs it with his receivers over and over. You know what the receiver's gonna do. You're not crossing your wires in there and just throwing the ball out of bounds. Because as a team, you're selling with the same process. Those of you that are managers, can you see how this is gonna help your coaching? So now after a call, instead of opinionating, you've got a framework. And you can say, you know, let's talk about your start. Or, you know, you asked a couple really good questions at the beginning, but then you didn't dig deep and you jumped right into your leverage stuff too quick. So this will give you a framework to be the coach, if you're a manager, to be the coach you always wanted to be. And here's the best part of this. I've been teaching this to salespeople for nearly two decades. It works. I've had so many customers, so many dealerships, so many individual salespeople say, you know what? After I learned this process, it took my game to a whole new level. No more winging it. I had one guy say, I owe my company a rebate because I've been wasting calls. I've just been making calls and putting on dog and pony shows, not getting any action, just talking my brains out and not really preparing and executing my selling. I had one salesperson say, I was lost, but now I'm found. Because now they've got a simple framework, whether you're a rookie or veteran, this framework will help you take your game to another level. You play like you practice. And unfortunately, so many times we don't practice enough, okay? This process, start, evaluate, leverage, lock is a powerful tool to help you do that. Let me summarize this last planning action, pre-call planning action, just kind of give you some guidelines on how to do this part of it. First of all, tool 4.1 is the tool that I can give you if you're interested in it, that pre-call planning tool. Maybe a good way to start would be to pick an actual customer call that you're gonna be making in the next few days, or maybe a significant call, a challenging call that's really gonna be tough, and then use that tool to pre-call plan. You'll be amazed at how much better you do. You might walk out of there going, okay, the days are winging it, they're over for me. I'm gonna do this for every call. My execution was better, the things I said, my focus, my clarity. Use that for a selected target call. You can even use this tool to create specific sell models for typical calls. Like if you have key products, or key target markets, or segments, or you've got a whole list of cold telephone calls, or A to Z when you're doing your A to Z calling, and you're going through lead list, or you're doing blitzes, what a great tool. So there's so much you can do with this simple sell tool. But the most important thing that I hope you take away from this is to use the sell tool as a daily regimen. Every call, in some semblance, you don't have to spend an hour, but maybe just a few minutes in your truck or your car, excuse me, before you go in, sit down and say, okay, what's my objective? What am I gonna say to start? What are some of the questions I need to ask? What a powerful tool in your daily, everyday selling. It'll take your game and your results, because you gotta make those big plays, and if you wanna make those big plays, man, you've gotta be prepared. Practice, practice, practice. You know, you've heard it said practice makes perfect, that's not true. Perfect practice makes perfect. And that's why having an offense, that's why having a framework is so important. Practice for continuous improvement. So we covered these three things in this quick hour and a half together. Territory planning, account strategic planning, and then of course, tactical pre-call planning. Let me just quickly summarize those so that you walk away from here saying, okay, what did I learn in this quick hour and a half? What do we as a dealership need to do? First of all, territory planning. Implement or utilize your CRM or other tools to assure these disciplines. Agency evaluation of all your accounts. Listing, grouping, and prioritizing your accounts. You know, grouping them A, B, C, D, and deciding what that looks like. It'll take a little bit of time to do that investment, but what a huge return. And then start week and month ahead call planning. Not just call reporting, but planning out your week ahead of time. Laying out appointments and calls. Filling up your calendar ahead. Man, it's a beautiful thing. It'll help you make some adjustments on your time management. The next thing that we talked about was account strategic planning. I wanna challenge you to select some major accounts, you know, three, five, seven, whatever the appropriate number is, and just initiate this simple discipline, formal account strategic planning. You can use the tool I offer, or you can just do it in your CRM, whatever works for you. But just do it. And a year from now, you'll thank me. Because some of those accounts will happen that would not have happened without that proactive approach. Account strategic planning. And then finally, start doing pre-call planning. Don't just make calls. Don't just walk in the door. Utilize the cell process tool for pre-call planning. As we end this webinar, vital planning disciplines for sales professionals, again, I just wanna remind you, I showed you a personal disciplines checklist at the beginning. I talked about strategic account planning tool, which is tool 3.1E. I talked about your cell offense pre-call planning tool. All those tools are gonna be available as takeaways from this webinar. All you have to do is just contact Rebecca at AED. She'll forward it to me. I'll get them to you. Or you can contact me directly. Go to my website. If you say, man, you know that stuff Butchery was talking about, pre-call planning, and I wish my people would do that. Get them a copy of my book. What a simple, great way to start. And it's an easy read. I know equipment salespeople sometimes don't like to read, but I'll tell you what, it might be life-changing for them to get a hold of that book and read it. Let me make just a few final comments here. And then we'll open it up if there happens to be any questions. Peter Drucker said this. The great industry leader. He said, unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes, but no plans. Let me read that again. Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes, but no plans. Gordon Hinckley said this. You can't plow a field simply by turning it over in your mind. And so the choice is yours. Coach Vince Lombardi said, I would say that the quality of a man's life is the full measure of that man's commitment to excellence and victory. Whether it be football, whether it be business, whether it be politics, government, and I would add sales. In your company or distributorship, and in your career as a sales professional, standardize the structure, tools, and disciplines of the four pillars. In particular, after this workshop, I challenge each of you to do the vital planning disciplines. Do them on purpose. Do them as regiments. And become sales professionals. Folks, I wanna thank you for a great session together. I know the fact that you registered for this means that you wanna take your game to another level, you wanna get better. If you're interested, AED is gonna be, AED has been promoting this event, November 17 to 19 in Dayton, Ohio, a full-blown two and a half day training camp covering the disciplines that I just talked about and much more. So if you've got some people that you say, man, they need this, I wanna implement this, and I follow up with sales managers afterwards to give them follow-up tools so that immediately after the training, they can reinforce it and embed it in the culture. This is not just throwing people at an event or sending somebody to some training and hope something sticks. This will implement the structure, tools, and disciplines that we talked about in a very effective, powerful way. So if you're interested in that, register soon. The event's almost full. We're up to about 40 people already. So if you wanna get a few people in under the wire, get in touch with AED quickly and get them registered. Thank you, folks. I'm gonna, we've got about three or four minutes here at the end. Are there any questions? And Deborah can, or Rebecca can take it off of mute and open it up if anybody has any questions. If not, you can just email me and I will respond to your questions. Yeah, there's no questions at this time, at least in the chat box. So while I'll let people just feel free if they wanna type in questions, that's fine. In the meantime, I just wanna thank you for a great presentation, Don. And certainly, as Don mentioned, certainly contact him if you have any questions or certainly AED, and we can direct you back to Don. Still no questions? So Don, I think we'll just wrap it up. And thanks again for a great presentation and hope everyone has a great day. All right.

sales professionals

planning

territory planning

account strategic planning

pre-call tactical planning

Four Pillars of the Sales Profession

ownership

personal responsibility

strategic planning process

pre-call planning

sell process

continuous improvement