
In our company we develop and implement our own programs. The time when we wrote programs only for the order, fortunately, was far behind. But now there is a new attack - created products must be sold.
We have the sales process, there is CRM and active sales. But it seems that we can do more.
This year we very eagerly set about improving our own skills, our developers and testers participated in three conferences (
Software People ,
SQADays ,
AgileCamp ), not counting the Stratoconf web conference organized by our favorites Pankratov and Sokolov.
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The turn of sales has come, and the first and, I hope, not the last step this year was the training of Nikolay Rysev “How to manage sales by 100%”. Now I am in a hurry to share my impressions.
For me as a leader, this training was a continuation of the previous
conference on leadership, manipulation and rhetoric , which I wrote about earlier. Not that they were connected by a single logic, but both events were good for streamlining knowledge.
Members
The audience was motley. I was one of the software developers, there were still a couple of guys promoting websites. There were representatives of the publishing business, a large group of listeners represented distribution companies. Participants were at the level of directors, sales managers and business coaches.
It was very nice to see (I wanted to say in work) in the training of young directors “Dairy Way” and “Bravo Telecom”. They were active and purposeful. I hope you will succeed, and your company will take the place that you prophesy them!
Older people were more restrained and picky. But it was interesting to communicate with them.
Riddles
From the beginning, for warming up, they made a riddle to us about two roads (to the city and to the robbers) and two brothers, one of whom always lies, and the other tells the truth. The riddle is what question one of the brothers needs to ask to know the way to the city.
I knew the answer, so I did not participate in the guessing, and the prize in the form of the author's book passed by me. Damn modesty!
In general, riddles - this is great, we always guess them in our
interviews .
Riddles and funny incidents accompanied us throughout both days, making learning easy and not letting listeners disconnect.
First surprise
As materials, we were given a thin book-outline of the training and a thick book by the author called “Leadership Technologies”. And it turned out that Rysev was promoting the idea of ​​organizing sales through leadership. Managerial techniques were also, but the emphasis was not on them. In particular, there were no reporting forms that were expected, there were no formal documents.
There was an approach that the author formulated as follows: the great commander does not plan a battle - he considers victory in details. In other words, you need to imagine where you are going, to see all the nuances and then plan and go through the path at the end of which you will get what you want.
So, the course was more about leadership than about management, the emphasis was on understanding and communicating your ideas to others. It was a surprise, and I can not say that it was unpleasant.
Planning, implementation and control activities
We remembered what a goal is from the SMART point of view. And then they did an exercise for its production. It was necessary to formulate the goal and bring it to the subordinates.
This training was interesting for its exercises. It was fun to watch as adults nod their heads and say that everything is clear, and then they forget to specify deadlines for the goal or generate a goal that makes it impossible to say whether it was reached or not. It was also fun to see my mistakes after he nodded his head.
Another author briefly introduced us to methods of enhancing speech, but this blotting from rhetoric (certainly useful) was given somehow crumpled.
And then we did the SWOT analysis exercise. This simple method allows you to streamline your knowledge, understand and then convey to others. It is the starting point for identifying goals and organizing their achievement.
Marketing management
Rysyov immediately explained why it is necessary to emphasize the first syllable in the word marketing. Unlike Mann, for whom this is a sign of the correctness of education, Rysyov is becoming more prosaic. People who emphasize the first syllable are more intolerant towards those who emphasize the second rather than the other way around. Therefore, we say marketing (smile).
In this section, the training was given a classic quick start in marketing: segmentation, positioning, perception maps. The most interesting were examples and practical exercises. And everything seems to be simple, and I read a lot about it myself, but when you do all the steps yourself, a system appears.
All
InfoCont , hold on!
Human Resource Management and Recruitment
Ingoda I have several interviews a day. To say that this topic was close to me is to say nothing.
At the training we were given an interesting list of questions, which is set during the interview with the sales manager. By the way, half of them we used in our company before. For example, we pretend to be consumers and ask applicants to sell us something by phone.
The only thing I didn’t like was the skill rating scale. We were asked to rate from 0 to 10 points. It is too complicated. I can think in three categories (yes, no, maybe). I can at 5, like at school, although it’s still a mystery to me how the two is different from the stake (one fig - the parents won't stroke the head). But 11 grades is a clear overkill. As a result, the assessment turns out to be very subjective, one and 8 - a low rating (not brilliantly, therefore, not 9 or 10), but to whom 5 is a high one. In general, everything is very subjective.
In practice, we broke up into pairs and interviewed each other. It was interesting to be in someone else's skin - it so happened that I myself have not been to any interview for 10 years.
Then we went from the search for employees to the methods of setting the problem. Here we adopted the following method and began to hone it.
Method such.
- Transfer information.
- Get feedback - check that everything is understood correctly.
- Get clear commitments to fulfill.
- Determine the frequency and form of control.
- Work on Option B - what to do if things don’t go as planned.
At the same time, when transmitting information, the following points should be clearly stated.
- Set the execution time.
- Justify the reality of the job.
- Clearly describe the expected result.
- Describe the means of the solution, indicating their availability.
- To give an algorithm for solving the problem (degree of detail depending on qualification).
- Work out the motivation.
In practice, we walked through this method and worked out the problem formulation in triples. In the top three, one was the boss, the second was a subordinate, and the third was an expert. Then exchanged views. This simple task turned out to be surprisingly useful, I even think, whether or not to conduct a mini-training on setting the task in our company.
Despite the fact that it was a sales training, this algorithm is universal, according to it you can set the task for everyone, even the janitor.
And a couple of words about the algorithm for solving the problem. People need to set a task depending on their qualifications. A person with a lack of knowledge need to decompose the algorithm on the shelves. A knowledgeable person needs to be convinced that the task is useful. A competent need to simply delegate the task.
This idea seems to be transparent, but why then (I know for myself) people, chewing every last minute to their best employee, enrage him. And then they tell yesterday's student that they trust him in a whole direction, disheartening him. So do not (smile).
Motivation
In this block, well-known models of intrapersonal motivation (Maslow, Martkedefer and Herzberg) were considered. They were reviewed quickly and interestingly, even those who were aware were not bored.
We did an assignment to the theory of expectations — we successively went through the components of the formula, showing the correlation of effort, result, and reward, increasing the significance of the latter.
Managing the sales and negotiation cycle
In this block, a general understanding of the sales cycle was given: sales planning, customer search, cold calls, contact, orientation, presentation, work with objections, contracting and supporting relationships.

It is not surprising, but I have met many merchants who have little understanding of what the sales cycle is.
Usually these are people engaged in passive sales, sitting on the phone and waiting for the same when the buyer calls. They begin work with the penultimate circle on the diagram and often do not bother to be interested in the latter.
There is nothing wrong if the number of buyers is large. But if they are not enough, but there are a lot of people and organizations that may be interested in it, then you need to start the game from the very first circle and go forward consistently. If you are lucky, then you can go several moves ahead at once. And you can stomp on the spot or go back like in children's board games with dice and chips.
But back to the training. After the sales cycle, we separately reviewed the techniques of working with objections. We were presented with various forms of processing objections, the use of which we have consolidated in practice.
Lastly, for different stages of the sales cycle, we reviewed methods and forms of control over the sales process.
Total
The training was interesting, it was not boring, it was not boring, there were many examples.
Minus - some of the moments slipped very quickly, some, it seems, we generally missed. For example, 4P marketing and building distribution channels have fallen victim to other parts of the course.
Once again I will clarify - this course was not about the organization of sales, it was a course about leadership in the organization of sales.
Each of the parts of the course, perhaps, cannot claim a breakthrough, familiarity with the new did not happen very deeply (let’s be realistic - can we do more in two days, including theory and practice).
Rather, the principle here is: don't know - meet and start using, you know - start using, using - sharpen. And most importantly integrate this knowledge into a coherent picture of your knowledge of commerce. The course was aimed, most likely, on it. I think so (smile).
And this course showed the direction and gave the magic booster to move in that direction. Let's see - how much energy is enough movement.