Increasing sales productivity and performance is the key to operating a successful business. You need sound strategies to improve sales productivity. Tony Robbins’ advice can help. Here we look at some of the best tips that he’s offered to salespeople over the years.
Salespeople face enormous challenges on a daily basis. They have to learn about their product, their industries, and their customers. On top of all of that, they have to come up with ways to improve sales performance.
It’s a lot of pressure. Many fall by the wayside because they don’t know how to improve sales skills. Thankfully, there are people who offer their own ideas to increase sales that you can look to for inspiration.
Tony Robbins is one of those people. Based in America, Robbins has crafted a reputation as the country’s leading business strategist. His expertise extends to business leadership, negotiations, and sales. This has resulted in a four-decade career, during which time he’s offered sales advice to people all over the world.
So, how can he help you to improve sales techniques? That’s where this article comes in. Here’s a collection of tips that come directly from the man himself. Use them as ways to improve sales performance in your organisation.
Tip #1 – Create a Unique Vision
Your vision defines what your organisation hopes to achieve. It’s what you use to stand out from the crowd and it’s how you attract top sales talent to your business. But it’s not enough to just have a vision. You need to believe in your vision with every fibre of your being. That’s what makes it unique to you.
As Robbins says: “Create a vision and never let the environment, other people’s beliefs, or the limits of what has been done in the past shape your decisions.”
Here’s what he’s saying with this advice. Your vision isn’t dependent on other people. It’s something that’s unique to you and your organisation. Allowing others to influence it means you’re also allowing them to influence your business. In the end, this is usually bad for sales.
Having a strong vision helps with increasing sales productivity and performance. It gives your sales team something to focus on. Moreover, it helps you to attract top talent who can bolster your sales performance.
Tip #2 – Use Effective Training Methods
You may bring a new salesperson on board who has a stellar track record. They’ve achieved massive sales elsewhere, so you automatically assume they’ll do the same for you. But after a couple of months, their numbers aren’t as impressive as you’d hoped.
That doesn’t mean you’ve made a bad hire. Instead, you’ve likely not provided the training that the salesperson needs.
Robbins says: “Different products call for different approaches. Even if a potential sales partner or rep has a winning track record, you still need to train them in the art of selling your products and services effectively.”
This is an important point. No two businesses do everything exactly the same. Even businesses that follow the same strategies to improve sales productivity have differences. They’ll have different processes and organisational setups. It’s not enough for your salespeople to know how to sell. They have to understand your whole business.
Dedicate some of your training sessions to your organisational structure. Inform your sales team about the different departments in the company and what they do. This provides your team with a deeper understanding of the business, which boosts their sales. Moreover, it shows them who they need to talk to when they have questions. This makes them more efficient, which also helps your organisation.
Tip #3 – Set High Standards
You may blame all sorts of things for poor sales performance. Maybe the economy isn’t performing as well as you want it to. Or, perhaps your industry is in the doldrums. These are all factors that you have no control over.
But they’re also not factors that should prevent you from increasing sales productivity and performance.
“Your income right now is a result of your standards,” says Robbins. “It is not the industry. It is not the economy.”
Robbins isn’t saying that the economy doesn’t have an effect on your business. What he’s saying is that you can’t blame it for your poor performance when your business has poor standards. His ideas to increase sales revolve around making your standards as high as possible. This allows you to enjoy boom periods when the economy does well. But it also ensures you’re ready to weather the storm when factors outside of your control take effect.
Here’s the point. Look inwards if your sales start to dip. This allows you to identify inefficiencies and poor processes that may affect your results. Fix all of them and the external factors won’t have as much of an effect on your business.
Tip #4 – Create Key Performance Indicators
It’s remarkable just how many businesses fail to keep track of their performance. They implement all sorts of strategies to improve sales productivity. But they do nothing to track the effects of their changes. This means that they have no idea whether their strategies work until they see the sales numbers.
This becomes a major problem as the business grows. You’ll have multiple sales channels, which can lead to communication breakdowns. Without Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), you’ll lose track of the results these channels achieve.
“Signals get crossed, expectations obscured, and confusion reigns,” says Robbins. “Your advantage will come from creating a specific set of Key Performance Indicators built against a defined delivery and performance schedule.”
Having KPIs gives your sales teams something to work towards. It shows them what they have to achieve, which means they can come up with ways to improve sales performance based on those KPIs.
They also provide you with data. You’ll see how well your strategies work, which allows you to tweak them accordingly.
Important KPIs in sales include:
- A primary goal. For example, increasing yearly revenue by $200,000.
- Specific goals. These include hitting a set number of sales per month or achieving a certain level of sales growth.
- Contextual indicators. These include things like cost per sale and average revenue per sale.
Getting all of these KPIs defined and in line helps you to keep track of sales performance.
Tip #5 – Have Passion
This is a really simple tip. If you don’t love what you do, you can’t expect others to care about it. For sales managers, this means you end up with an unmotivated sales force. For salespeople, a lack of passion won’t convince customers to buy from you.
Robbins keeps it simple too. “Lack of emotion causes lack of progress and lack of motivation.”
If you’re a sales manager, show that you care about what you do. Have passion and celebrate in the successes of your team. When things go wrong, talk to your salespeople and keep pushing them to get over whatever hurdles are in their way. Show that you care and your people respond in kind. This is one of the key ideas to increase sales.
But having passion is also one of the ways to improve sales performance for salespeople. Customers can tell when you don’t care about your product. They’ll detect your lack of enthusiasm and immediately switch off from what you’re saying. But if you show that you love what you do, they’ll engage with you. If you can transfer this emotion into a passion for helping clients, you’ll achieve even more success.
Tip #6 – Keep Practicing
Think about any skills that you have. They don’t have to relate to sales. They’re just something that you can do better than most people.
It’s likely that you weren’t instantly proficient. Even the most naturally gifted people in the world need to practice to develop their skills. This applies to sales just as it applies to everything else.
Robbins keeps it simple again when he says: “Repetition is the mother of skill.”
This is simply another way of saying that practice makes perfect. You can’t improve sales techniques if you don’t keep practicing them.
There’s a deeper message here that you may have missed. Robbins tells you that you shouldn’t give up on a sales technique just because it doesn’t work right away. The problem may not lie with the technique itself. Instead, you may not have developed the proficiency needed to execute it as well as you need to.
Keep this advice in mind whenever you develop a new technique or ask your salespeople to try new skills. You’re not always going to achieve instant results. In fact, the transitional period could even lead to a slight dip as your people adjust. Keep practicing and refining the technique, rather than giving up on it. Only once you’ve achieved true competency can you determine if the technique works for your business.
The Final Word
Tony Robbins has stood at the forefront of the business consultancy world for so long for a reason.
His advice works. If you put what he says into practice, you’ll improve sales techniques and increase your revenue.
Here are the key takeaways from this article:
- Have a unique vision that informs your sales processes and attracts top talent to your business.
- Don’t assume that experienced salespeople have all of the training that they need. Constantly teach new skills and make sure your people understand the organisation, as well as the product.
- Set high standards that ensure the internal efficiency of your business. This ensures that external factors can’t devastate your sales.
- Use KPIs to track the key metrics related to your team’s sales performance.
- Have passion for everything related to the business. Managers use this to motivate their teams, while salespeople use it to achieve more sales.
- Don’t assume a technique doesn’t work because it doesn’t produce instant results. Build proficiency before making any decisions.
If you need more help with putting this advice into practice, the CUB Network is here.
At CUB our ambition is to unite those who are changing the world through their businesses. We support these people by building a private community of Australia’s next titans of industry. And we bring these titans together to accelerate the achievement of each other’s ambitions.
If you wish to be considered for membership, please feel free to request a club introduction on our membership page: www.cub.club/membership.
