Sales Ninja Killer Newsletter

I think a lot of people confuse activity vs achievement. I have a client whose whole sales management philosophy is focus on sales activity. I totally agree that without sales activities, there isn’t going to be any achievement. But there is also another way to look at it, i’ve often asked my clients, why isn’t the pipeline moving? Firstly, we need to fill the pipeline, that’s sales activities, prospecting to be specific. Once they are filled, then why isn’t the pipeline moving?

I’ve found few reasons why pipeline don’t move. One of the main one is this: the pipeline is stucked with many unqualified leads and prospects. If management wants to see activities, sales people will fill the pipeline with activities, but what kind of activities? They will plug in any leads they have. And that is lots of activity and zero achievement.

Key to a healthy pipline is this > if it’s a big deal, quality is more important than quantity because in big deals, we need to spend a lot of time working the deal. 3x the target revenue would be good enough. > If it’s small deals, quantity is then slightly more important. This is where the law of averages play a part.

Conclusion, while sales activities are important, also think of sales achievements. What is being achieved here? Running faster in a wrong direction leads to the land of lost. Lost of deals, lost of sales, losts of motivation and ultimately loss of sales people because they are not performing and thus quits because they are pressured on sales activities but what is really more important is sales achievements.

Hanzo Ng
SalesNinja Grandmaster

In my skills based training, participants are always in groups role-playing and practicing the skills I taught. In one instance, I was training a group of 30+- advertising sales reps. On day 2 in one of the groups, a terrible thing happened…

Sales manager: Ok, you do it.
Sales rep tries half way, and then got stuck.

Sales manager: How come you can’t do it?

I walk to their table. Sales manager looks at me.

Sales manager: See Hanzo, see my people, see what kind of people I have.
Sales rep starts crying because of the pressure and public humiliation.

Sales manager: Aiyo! Little things also cannot do it, little things also cannot take the pressure, how can you do sales?

There are lots of lessons to learn from this situation. Here are some I think are important to write in this post:

1: Principle of a Sales Ninja leader is “Your team’s result is your result!”. So, if the team is not performing, it’s the leaders duty to make sure they do. And if they don’t it’s the leaders responsibility.

Which leads to principle 2: “Your job as a sales leader is to get other people to do what you CAN do or what you want them to do.” Which means, you need to constantly train, coach, mentor and teach your sales people. It’s easy to put the blame onto the sales people when it’s not performing, but here’s the thing, have you truly done your job as a sales leader?

3rd lesson: “Always praise publicly and criticize privately”. An old adage but still so relevant. And still not practiced by so many sales managers and leaders. In my understanding of psychology, in the above situation, the manager wanted to feel good herself and in order for her to feel good, she has to make another person feel bad. Makes a lot of sense doesn’t it?

A shout to all sales managers and leaders that have not been through my Sales Ninja Shogun trainings (Shogun = sales leadership & management training). If you want to expect Results from your team, bear in mind the Sales Ninja results formula.

Activity + Skills + Knowledge = Results.

If you want results, make sure you motivate your sales team to do their sales activities, train them selling and people skills and teach them knowledge of all kinds like product knowledge, market knowledge, competitor knowledge, etc…

Only then can you expect results!

Unconventionally,
HANZO NG
Sales Ninja Grandmaster

© 2009 onwards Sales Ninja Training. All Rights Reserved.

Hanzo Ng is Sales Ninja Grandmaster, lingo for Chief Trainer of Sales Ninja Training, Asia’s #1 Unconventional Sales Training. Sales Ninja Training specializes in helping small-medium, listed and global companies transform their sales people into the ultimate sales professional known as Sales Ninja. For more information on our sales, motivation and leadership trainings, visit http://www.SalesNinja.com

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Been selling for 10, 20, 30 years? That’s great. Or was it 1 years experience repeated 10 times? In Sales Ninja world: Experience ≠ Results. Experience gives you a higher confident level because you are familiar with the product or the process. The key question here is, are you producing more sales and making more money every single year? If yes, i congratulate you, keep practicing what you are doing because results matter. If your performance is not going UP, then here are 2 suggestions for you:

1 >> Keep pushing yourself. Remember when you got started? How blazing your fire was? How much time you spend hitting the floors and punching the numbers on the phone to get appointments? The more years you are in selling, the more it turns you into an order-taker, mostly doing visitings and servicings and taking orders from your customers. That’s not selling.

I have a public listed client who dominates the market with more than 50% market share. With over 20 years in the business the relationship with the clients are solidly strong. The CEO launched a new product and wants the team to sell it to the clients. The results were miserable. Experience field reps with strong relationships with their existing customers unable to cross sell other products. Why? Very experienced sales people, but they forgot how to sell, they were servicing. Which leads me to point number 2…

2 >> Go back to the basics. Selling is all about mastering all the basics and practicing all the basics. It does not matter how experienced you are, you must use the basic skills of selling at all times. The more i conduct sales trainings in Malaysia or for that matter any other countries across the world, the more i realize how important mastering the basics are. Most sales people know the basics, but they have not mastered all of them. They just do a few of this and a few of that. That’s not Sales Best Practices. It’s called Sales Best Practices because it must always be… Practiced!

No skilled athlete or fighter is going to say, i’ve swinged a few times, i’m the master, i don’t need to swing anymore, let’s do something else. Michael Jordan is famous for a story of him shooting 1000 baskets in his practices before he stops. That’s practicing the basics. A fighter before a battle practices straight punches, the most basic of all punches, but he/she keeps practicing that, why?? Because that’s Best Practices – it must always be practiced!

My view is this, it does not matter what you know or how much you know or how long you’ve been selling. It’s results – period!

Unconventionally,
HANZO NG
Sales Ninja Grandmaster

© 2009 onwards Sales Ninja Training. All Rights Reserved.

Hanzo Ng is Sales Ninja Grandmaster, lingo for Chief Trainer of Sales Ninja Training, Asia’s #1 Unconventional Sales Training. Sales Ninja Training specializes in helping small-medium, listed and global companies transform their sales people into the ultimate sales professional known as Sales Ninja. For more information on our sales, motivation and leadership trainings, visit http://www.SalesNinja.com

   Click here to subscribe to Sales Ninja Killer Newsletter

Email came in today with Gary Halbert, a legendary direct marketer’s saying “You will only succeed through Movement not Meditation”! Wow! So true! You can sit there and visualize all the prospects converting to customers. You can do all the law of attraction you want, but ultimately, it must be combined with movement, action, execution or in Sales Ninja terminology – PRACTICE! So pick up the phone and do your cold calls. Send that email out to follow-up on your prospects. Ask for referrals. Don’t just sit there, do something that brings you sales, that makes you money! Do it… NOW!

Unconventionally,
HANZO NG
Sales Ninja Grandmaster

© 2009 onwards Sales Ninja Training. All Rights Reserved.

Hanzo Ng is Sales Ninja Grandmaster, lingo for Chief Trainer of Sales Ninja Training, Asia’s #1 Unconventional Sales Training. Sales Ninja Training specializes in helping small-medium, listed and global companies transform their sales people into the ultimate sales professional known as Sales Ninja. For more information on our sales, motivation and leadership trainings, visit http://www.SalesNinja.com

   Click here to subscribe to Sales Ninja Killer Newsletter

I will now start writing a series of posts relating what i know about martial arts to sales, to selling. Obviously the philosophies and principles are general enough to apply to life. So think beyond the context and be creative in the application. I have 3 black belts in martial arts and it has definitely taught me so many things. To start off, all martial artists begin with what kind of belt?

Begin With White Belt

Start with the fundamentals. Make sure you master the basics of selling. Don’t get trapped into learning some advanced techniques that can short cut your way to success. Learn one step at a time. The beginning is going to be hard but it is also the most important. Begin hard and end easy. If you begin easy, you will end hard. If you don’t pay attention to your White Belt, you will miss the crucial things that will grow your bank account.

In martial arts, the best techniques are also those you learn in White Belt - straight punches, basic blocks, front kicks. Those ‘advanced’ flying kicks are not practical in real fighting situations. They look good in martial arts demonstration but are useless in group fightings. So do you know what are the White Belts of selling? Are you the master of all the basic of selling? Which area can you work on? Always remember, even though you are a Black Belt in sales, a veteran, a senior with lots of experience, don’t lose your edge in the basics of selling. Polish your White Belt skills today.

Unconventionally,
HANZO NG
Sales Ninja Grandmaster

© 2009 Sales Ninja Training. All Rights Reserved.

Hanzo Ng is Sales Ninja Grandmaster, lingo for Chief Trainer of Sales Ninja Training, Asia’s #1 Unconventional Sales Training. Sales Ninja Training specializes in helping small-medium, listed and global companies transform their sales people into the ultimate sales professional known as Sales Ninja. For more information on our sales, motivation and leadership trainings, visit http://www.SalesNinja.com

   Click here to subscribe to Sales Ninja Killer Newsletter