Building Human Relationships for Business Sales Success

Posted on December 31, 2014 by admin

Sales Professionals understand that building human relationships is key to business sales success, something lost on most sales people who come and go. The Visitors.

You see, the Sale begins with You.

There are simple, and complex, human components essential to building authentic, lasting human relationships are also relevant in business sales relationships:

You and the Opportunity to Meet Someone New
A Conversation
The Process of Discovery and Warming-Up
Rapport
Value
Desire
Mutual Respect and Acceptance
Persuasion
Commitment

Being a Sales Strategist

Posted on September 1, 2014 by admin

It’s amazing how many sales and business development professionals, managers and executives, still think sales is a numbers game. And, it’s still a popular belief Today.

I understand. I understand that If you believe sales is a numbers game, you’re wrong.

While there are slight variations, according to this archaic theory ~ all you need to do (to be successful in sales) is call, call, call. Go to every lead, quasi-qualified or unqualified. Pitch! Pitch! Pitch to Someday! Demo! Demo! Demo to Anybody! You must be committed to the numbers. Fill your pipeline with a zillion suspects who’ll turn into X number of prospects, sales opportunities, and ultimately customers or clients.

The song remains the same, the message passed on from one sales generation to the next. We’ve been conditioned to accept that going after every prospect is essential to our success.

What if it isn’t? What if the numbers game isn’t a success factor anymore?

What if trying to work all those prospects infects our thinking, causes our sales performance, individual and team, to become ineffectual? What if we could generate more sales with fewer prospects?

Most sales and business development people would consider these questions heresy against the sales gods and gurus.

Thinking and Acting as a Sales Strategist

In the long run, Top Sellers, the Best of the Best Closers, pursue fewer prospects. Top Sellers spend more time thinking and acting as a Sales Strategist about:

The goals and objectives of their target market, customers/clients.
Linking marketing to sales process.
Connecting and networking for mutual benefit.
Pre-Qualify/Qualify potential customers/clients.
Being more Consultative and Solution-centric.
Guiding prospects through the sales cycle.
Increasing Market Value.

By slowing down, focusing on quality not quantity, we can develop the rapport, relationship, and credibility we need to get the business. We can go deeper, learn more, and support the client/customer with the right solutions.

Nurturing any kind of relationship requires an investment of time. Are you spending enough time with clients/customers throughout the sales process? Are you committed to a Sales Closing Process? Conditioning? Gaining commitments every step of the way? Pre-closing? Or, are you pitching and running? Are you just a visitor?

Being Sales Strategists, our clients/customers trust our recommendations. We become their Strategic Advisors creating even more opportunities to succeed.

Our goal is to help prospects understand the business value of the solution. More importantly, how changing the status quo can impact organizational culture, sustaining business growth and profitability.

Be Bold. What would you do differently this month if you rejected the numbers game?Do you think it would make a difference in your sales performance?

That’s the challenge. Reject the #1 Sales Myth! Think fewer, not more. Compel yourself (and your sales team) to shift sales behavior with a fresh mind-set and sales strategies.

Being a Sales Strategist means sales isn’t a numbers game anymore, it’s an effectiveness game. Be yourself. Make the right connections. Make human connections.

Connecting and Networking for Mutual Benefit.

Always Be Engaging.

Marc Ortiz de Candia | Vitalia Consulting | The Enlightened Leadership Leader

Solution-Recognition for Enlightened Leaders

Posted on October 18, 2013 by admin

Abre los ojos, los oidos, la mente, y el corazon.

Vitalia Consulting (VC) is not a conventional management consulting firm, and we don’t intend to become one. Our client-consultant role is to inspire forward-thinking solutions and actions. “Solution-Recognition” is an important tool in the process of searching for (and finding) the best innovative ideas.

“We need more ideas” is a phrase we hear almost every day. Innovation isn’t constrained by the absence of ideas, but the inability to notice the good-to-great ideas right in front of you. It’s not an idea problem; it’s a Solution-Recognition dilemma.

Ideas are free. So, why not take advantage of such a great value? Whatever happened to “Brain-Storming” where no idea was pre-judged as a bad idea, no matter how absurd the idea initially appeared to be? While Brain-storming has morphed into Ideation, White-boarding, Iterative Process, Blue Sky Thinking, etc., it’s rarely used the way it was originally intended. “Thinking Outside the Box” has been so overused and abused, it’s become a gag in bad commercials.

Once upon a time (1984-1987) while working with Vici Associates International (based in Milan, Italy) we used the creative-strategic process “ProThink” to stimulate innovative and pragmatic solutions for our client-companies. Guess What? The concept still works! Unfortunately, most companies (then and now) fail to consistently capitalize on Solution-Recognition, and make it an integral part of organizational culture. In my experience, it requires not only a mind-shift but also (and more importantly) a behavioral, cultural transformation.

In the digital speed of social media: Golden Opportunities are lost amidst the chatter. Great moments of brilliance never return to our work/lives.

People tend to think of creativity as flashes of light from the heavens, anointing the next demi-god of genius. In business world reality, new insights and ideas come from hard work. While analytic data can identify real opportunities, these insights must then be transformed into practical, viable ideas. Cogito Ergo Zoom (I Think. Therefore, I go fast.) is the wrong-headed mentality for Solution-Recognition to work.

Solution-Recognition requires:

An Open Mind
Genuine Listening Skills
Passionate Intelligence (Intelligence that can actually be Applied)
The Ability to Dream with “Eyes Wide Open”
Being Empathic
Emotional Intelligence (High EQ)

Research has found that those managers/leaders exposed to a small amount of uncertainty said they value creativity, but actually tended to favor practical word pairings over creative word pairings. If such a negative bias against creativity exists in times of uncertainty, it might explain why so many notable innovations (in business history) were initially rejected. Is this happening in your business?

The implications are particularly relevant now, as few leaders/managers would claim that they’re not working in an uncertain industry. The same uncertainty that propels the need for companies to innovate may also be compelling leaders/managers to reject discoveries that could help them gain a competitive edge.

The innovative ideas that would keep your company alive (and sustain growth) are being killed in the embryonic stage of development, or even at conception.

One possible solution to this “idea killing” is to change the structural system ideas must move through for acceptance and execution. Instead of using the traditional hierarchy to find and approve ideas, this process could be spread across the whole organization. Given a higher priority than immediate revenue, the idea market can create an organizational culture where new ideas are recognized and approved throughout the entire company, a democratization of recognition. What do You Think?

Solution-Recognition becomes an organizational “way of life” based on the assumption that everyone is capable of producing great ideas.

Example: We have a new client (based here in California) who recruited a highly-skilled, experienced Sales Team without building the right organizational infrastructure to support that Sales Team, without professionally mature Sales Management to properly lead and coach that Sales Team, without developing the software tools for that Sales Team to close more deals and succeed, resulting in an under-performing, disillusioned, demotivated Sales Team in complete disarray.

In essence, without Solution-Recognition, “putting the cart before the horse.” Your Management/Leadership habits become either an albatross or a catalyst for growth. The problem lies in Management/Leadership failure to (adapt and change) genuinely listen to the concerns, problems, situations the Sales Team is facing in the field. Genuinely listening to the Sales Team would engender coaching opportunities, and collaborative solutions for the true underlying problems.

Enlightened Management/Leadership embraces Solution-Recognition. Remember, You are defined by what You do.

Example: Enlightened Leaders get out of the office more often. These “empathic outings” are purposeful field trips, a way to effectively connect with employees, customers, vendors, alliance partners, and others key to the success of your business. This also makes an enormous difference in gaining commitment to shifts in business and organizational behavior, and solving related issues. The purpose of these meetings is not just for gathering information, but more crucially to discover, uncover crucial patterns of what’s working and not working in your business, misalignments in your business and organizational vision/strategies.

Example: We use Solution-Recognition in our most productive client-projects:

Business Turnaround Projects
Business Growth Projects
New Business Ventures ~ Entrepreneurial Start-Up Projects

The Message: Reject Solution-Recognition at your peril, and suffer the grapes of wrath. Vitalia Consulting (VC) is not a conventional management consulting firm, and we don’t intend to become one. Our client-consultant role is to inspire forward-thinking solutions and actions. Solution-Recognition is an essential tool for every successful business.

Partner with Us. Let’s start with a conversation.

Marc Ortiz de Candia
Executive Partner ~ Provocateur
Vitalia Consulting | The Enlightened Leadership Leader

Tango Lessons ~ Building and Sustaining Relationships

Posted on July 9, 2013 by admin

No matter how great a visionary leader you may be, you will always need others to fully execute your vision, your dream. It’s a fundamental axiom of business and of life. It takes 2:2 Tango (at least two) and it is a beautiful, intricate, intimate, and powerful dance.

Here are a few free Tango Lessons.

One of the reasons we work in multi-disciplinary teams at Vitalia Consulting is because there is power in numbers and in diverse expertise. No Vitalia consultant, coach, facilitator, advisor or analyst, client services associate is ever left alone to deliver the message, ask the hard questions, or answer the hard questions. The lone exception are Executive Coaching Sessions which are strictly one-on-one private sessions.

As we work with our clients to solve complex business and organizational problems, a team of diverse minds (working together) discovers, uncovers the best solutions. Partner with Us!

The power of multi-disciplinary teams is proven, especially when working with executive leaders and groups of professionals because no individual (regardless of status, charisma, influence, aura, or personal presence) resonates with everyone.

While building and sustaining relationships is key to business success, few people are effective at doing both. Believe it. Look at your client-customer retention rate. Look at the rising divorce rate. Look at how relationships come and go faster than the changing of seasons. So, when you find a relationship builder who can also sustain relationships, hold onto them like a lifeboat against the current.

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Most of us know “It Takes Two To Tango” is a truism, but how often do we actually practice it? Is it part of your personal/professional skill-set, mind-set?

Face it: Those self-obsessed with expressing only their own ideas just aren’t very good at building and sustaining relationships, find it hard to listen, fail to observe, and never learn to Tango.

Partnering requires learning to Tango. Collaboration requires learning to Tango. Networking requires learning to Tango. And not just learning a few basic steps (see Tangerine Tango blog). You must become a World-Class Tango Dancer to Master the Art of the Deal, to make all the right moves, to gain mutual agreement. See for Yourself: The Best Latin Tango

Every great composer needs great musicians. Every great musician needs great composers.

Mutual attraction, rapport, trust, respect, compatibility, and commitment are key elements of every lasting relationship. Remember this: No relationship can thrive or survive without mutual benefit and commitment. Once these relationship elements are lost, there is no relationship.

Vitalia Consulting builds and sustains cultures of mutual benefit and inclusion, driven by a desire to partner with others to get things done. You succeed by helping others become successful. Helping others helps you, too. Keep in mind, help is only a relationship away.

Conversely, in cultures where “greed is good” (cultures that value the lone wolf, the lone shark, the lone genius) the act of working with others to get things done gets lost, projects stall, the brilliance of team ideas fades away.

We, Vitalia Consulting, believe that building and sustaining relationships should be a pre-requisite for all vital executive leaders, emerging leaders, and leadership development. True Relationships weather the storms. True Relationships can live forever.

Don’t forget the human touch, gestures, and movements. Give your relationships face time, real time. Be genuinely attentive, interested in people. Listen first. Listen, hear, and learn from their stories. Be open to being enlightened. Tell and show, don’t sell. Be authentic. Be yourself. No one likes a great pretender. Don’t be afraid of being human. Get lost once in awhile.

Want warmer relationships? Exude warmth. Be passionate about something. Meet off-site (whenever possible) at unique venues. Be compelling.

Embrace reciprocity. Give to receive. Relax. Now immerse yourself in the dance.

It really does take at least 2:2 Tango. Come on, let’s dance The Tango!

Partner with Us! Let’s Get Started.

Marc Ortiz de Candia, Executive Partner ~ Provocateur

Vitalia Consulting | The Enlightened Leadership Leader

When Knowledge (Alone) is Not Enough

Posted on March 24, 2013 by admin

One of the most salient things I have observed in meetings with countless C-Level Executives is the overwhelming pool of information they’re swimming in. The result is too much data driving them insane ~ which only yesterday was commonly referred to as “analysis-paralysis.” The results are in-decisions, in-actions and inertia, uncertainty about which move to make. So, nothing changes if nothing changes.

Our initial role (in Organizational Leadership Consulting and Coaching) is to help these C-Level Executives wade through the waves of data to find the right information, the right solutions. At this point, It’s important to note that there is no pitch, there is no presentation, no assumptions or conclusions. In the beginning, we are simply listeners and observers asking key questions, guiding our clients, mired in confusion, out of the abyss. We are facilitators of the process.

When is knowledge (alone) not enough? When is knowledge (alone) not power? You and I have seen zillions of sales professionals, managers, and executives go through the “sales training hotel factories” coming out with only a cheap binder and more information (plenty of getaway trip stories to tell) but no knowledge retention, process and skills application, or behavioral shifts that last beyond a few days, a few weeks at best. There’s a reason why “talk is cheap.”

Revolt against the archaic business culture of “just gimme the knowledge, just gimme the information/data!” There’s much more vital work to be done. Of course, this requires Enlightened Leadership with the desire and the resources to sustain high business growth. Nothing happens without Enlightened Leadership.

To illustrate, one of our most recent projects (right in our wheelhouse) is focused on “Sales Performance Optimization.” We’re working with a dysfunctional sales group with mountains of information, tons of knowledge but without the right sales people, without the right sales process, and without the right sales tools. We fix dysfunctional organizations. Partner with Us.

Our approach to every client project is simple and effective. We began this project by meeting with the C-Level Executive Leadership Team, not just the Sales Group Management. We take a panoramic view and then zoom-in. We start by building Organizational Vision and Holistic Strategies because the Sales Group is inter-connected with all other organizations within the business. Many pictures from different angles are necessary.

Simultaneously, we are conducting an Organizational Culture Assessment that will result in a comparative analysis between the leadership’s perception of their organization and what people (within the organization) and customers (outside the organization) are actually experiencing. There are always execution chasms which need to be filled before moving forward with any formal development or learning.

In this case, the Sales Group had the highest turnover rate (higher than telemarketing) in the company, and reported into an Operations Vice President who didn’t understand sales or selling, or the difference between marketing, sales, business development and account management. These things were known by everyone in the client company.

While the assessment offers information/knowledge/data, our job is to uncover and discover the right solutions in tandem with our clients. In turn, radical new buyer behavior requires re-thinking sales. Buyers are much more informed. The sheer volume of information buyers can access can humble the best sales professionals, managers, and executives causing them to compete on price. The new imperative facing sales leaders is to re-tool the organization and build a culture of continuous improvement.

No more worthless seminars or workshops. Everything is done in session-work, one to three hour sessions: Leadership Development Sessions, Vision and Strategy Sessions, Sales Development Sessions, Individual and Group Coaching Sessions…

According to The Aberdeen Group “Best in Class” companies determine characteristics of “Best in Class” professional sales performers on an annual basis, as defined by:

Top 20% in Quota Attainment
Top 20% in YOY Revenue Growth
Top 20% in Average Deal Size Increase

The truth is in the performance numbers. This research shows the three key areas in which the best performing companies differentiate from their peers, and adapt to changing sales requirements:

Scientifically assess the specific requirements for sales models, and align hiring and development to those profiles.
Develop world class capabilities by aligning sales process, methods, and never-ending learning to ever-changing buyer behavior
Enable effective, consistent application of best practices by integrating sales tools and state-of-the-art technologies

Remember, the main reason why most “sales closing systems” fail is because there is no opportunity for the sales professional to practice and test mastering the re-tooled sales process. No true individual commitment to the sales process and no reinforcement after the “learning session.” This is why “individual coaching” must be an integral component of every “Sales Performance Optimization” Platform.

In the New Age of Enlightenment, knowledge (alone) is not enough to get things done, to adapt to the rapidly evolving marketplace, to create lasting success. Having a trillion pieces to a puzzle is not enough. You must the right pieces to put the right picture together.

So, what are your answers: Are You An Enlightened Leader? Do you have the right sales people, the right sales process, the right sales tools for sales performance optimization? Are you ready to put together the sales organization puzzle?

Let’s get started! Partner with Us.

Marc Ortiz de Candia, Executive Partner, Vitalia Consulting