Sales Growth: Help Your Millennial Leader Develop a Productive Sales Mind
The challenge that social media brings to a sales leader’s coaching strategies inspired my Forbes article, Is social media impacting the business results of your Millennials?
In the article, I cover how to coach your Millennial to fight the Need for Approval and deal with Rejection. In addition, building their Comfort in Talking about Money will help solve business frustrations such as:
- Why aren’t we generating more new business?
- Why isn’t our sales cycle shorter?
- Are we selling consultative?
- Are we selling on price and who can become a valued seller?
- Can we close more sales?
- Can we improve our pipeline and forecasting accuracy?
How are you helping your up-and-coming Millennial leaders to develop a productive sales mind so they can stay productive and not let social media, or other forms of negativity, impact their sales and leadership results?
In a recent study conducted by the Barna Research Group, they asked participants whether these statements were true:
“Looking at other people’s posts often make me feel bad about the way I look.”
30% of Millennials agreed, compared to only 4% of Boomers.
“Looking at other people’s posts often makes me feel bad about the lack of excitement in my own life.”
34% of Millennials agreed, compared to 8% of Boomers.
Is social media responsible for my stagnant sales team?
Social media isn’t causing declining sales productivity. It’s the way in which people – yes, even your emerging sales leaders – might be impacted by social media that can potentially ruin their sales results.
As I’ve mentioned in the Forbes article comparing their success to other users on social media might leave them feeling depressed and less confident in their own abilities. These negative thought patterns, combined with other negative input, inadvertently leads to unproductive and sabotaging behaviors during their sales conversations. The result? Disappointing results from Millennials you had high hopes for.
In addition to coaching your Millennials to fight Need for Approval and to Deal with Rejection, you can also work with them to building their Comfort in Talking about Money.
Overcome the fear of Talking about Money
Growing up, many parents told their kids that it’s rude and impolite to talk to people about money. Many Millennials have this mantra drilled into their unconscious thought pattern: “It’s rude to talk about religion, sex, politics or money in public!”
However, in the world of sales, this rule about money doesn’t work. In fact, it’s counter-productive, sabotaging performance.
To be consistently successful, a sales professional and leader needs to be comfortably confident asking business-appropriate questions about:
- How much money the prospect has;
- Where the money is coming from; and
- How they can come up with more money.
In fact, 98% of elite salespeople are able to comfortably discuss money throughout the entire sales process, compared to only 2% of the bottom section. How do you think your sales team would rate on this? Would they be in the top 98%? Or, the bottom 2%? Or somewhere in between?
How can you help your Millennial sales leader to become a member of the elite group?
Step up and Take Action
- Train on the Decision Maker Thinking, so that your salesperson understands the importance of margins and profitability in building high growth companies.
- Chart the questioning strategy around the money decision so that they have a track to run on. Money needs to be discussed in detail to ensure there’s a correct fit.
- Create role-plays where your up-and-coming salesperson can practice the money questioning track with prospects.
- Provide examples of how you helped a client to “find resources” when they thought they couldn’t afford your product.
- Stress the importance of becoming a trusted value-adding partner, instead of being seen as a pushy let-me-tell-you-how-great-my-new-product/service-is nuisance.
Who on your sales team is struggling with this hidden weakness? How is it impacting their performance? How do you ensure that you don’t hire new salespeople with this weakness? Check out this webinar.
As an experienced leader, you have the wisdom to coach and mentor your up-and-coming sales superstars to overcome negative sales thinking. You can be proactive in ensuring that they don’t become social media casualties by teaching them healthy social media habits. Inspire them to be aware of their unique skills and talents so that they will confidently drive new business and exceed their sales goals.
Leadership Lesson: Prevent negative thinking patterns from limiting your emerging leader’s sales potential by teaching them healthy social media habits.
Leadership Question: What are you doing to inspire productive sales beliefs in your up-and-coming sales leaders?
© Copyright 2018 Danita Bye
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