“Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand.” ~Sue Patton Thoele

Post written by Jeremy J. Ulmer. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

1. Be Present & Stay Focused. Stop thinking about what you are going to say next and focus on what the speaker is telling you. Be curious and ask follow up questions to learn more about what they are telling you.

2. Pause Before You Respond. Take 2 full breaths before responding. It will ensure the speaker is finished and give them space to share more. It will also help you control the amount of talking you are doing.

3. Refocus If Your Mind Wanders. If you start thinking about your next meeting, travel plans, or what you have planned for the evening, bring yourself back to the moment.

4. Summarize & Bottom Line The Key Points. Play back to the speaker the key items you are hearing to ensure you are capturing the essence of what is being relayed to you. Make sure to take notes of these key items so you can revisit them as needed later in the meeting.

5. Focus On Listening & Understanding Versus Judging & Opinion. It is natural to want to share your 2 cents right away, or to be making judgments in your mind about what you are hearing. However, that is not focused listening. Stop yourself from doing this by placing your attention on learning, listening, and understanding. Ask open ended questions that begin with “What” to stay focused on listening and understanding.

6. Use Your Intuition. Whether you are on the phone or in person, you should be listening not only with your ears, but with your intuition as well. Notice the speaker’s breathing, tone, pace, and energy. There is a lot of information to be gathered and the more you pay attention to your intuition, the more effective your listening will be.

7. Never Talk Over Anyone. If the speaker is talking, simply wait your turn. Do not try to interject, and if you do, catch yourself, and say, “Sorry, please carry on…”

8. Ignore Internal & External Distractions. Image you are in a bubble with the person you are speaking to and they are the center of your universe. Try it out and watch what kind of impact it will have.

9. Resist Telling The Speaker How You Handled A Similar Situation. Pause yourself from sharing your own input and experiences until you have fully listened to what the speaker has to say.

10. Relax. The more calm you are, the more information you will gather from the person you are listening to since they will be at ease with you.

If this article was helpful to you, please share it and help spread the word. Thank you!

“My father said: You must never try to make all the money that’s in a deal. Let the other fellow make some money too, because if you have a reputation for always making all the money, you won’t have many deals.” ~Getty, J. Paul

Post written by Jeremy J. Ulmer. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

1. Create An Agreed Upon Agenda. Determine the following: What needs to be resolved? Who is involved? What are the major issues? What are the time frames?

2. Resist Committing Too Early. Do not lock in your pricing or commit to other items until everything is on the table and negotiated.

3. Resolve Any Major Issues Early. If the prospect has some major concern about your organization, it is best to uncover this early, so that it is not brought up at the end of the negotiation which will weaken your position and you’ll be tempted to give in to more concessions.

4. Determine What Can Be Shared. Determine the information you will disclose or not disclose with the prospect. Also, consider what types of information they are open to sharing and the information they are keeping from you.

5. Focus On Needs & Requirements. Don’t get caught up on the price alone. Ask to put price aside for a moment and address all other obstacles to find a solution.

6. Establish Value For Your Service or Product. Understand needs, challenges, goals, and then provide a solution.

7. Throw Your Ego Out The Window. If you view the negotiation as a personal victory or loss, your ego is involved and can make it difficult to remain objective during the negotiation process.

8. Buy Yourself Some Time If Needed. Be upfront, but if you can’t approve something yourself and you need a sales director to approve it for you, let the prospect know you need to check with your manager before making the change to the agreement.

9. Plan Ahead. Come to the table armed with where you are willing to give and where you simply can not make any changes.

10. Know When To Walk Away. You and your sales management team should have clear guidelines for what is profitable business and what is not. Be sure to know when you need to end the negotiation if it will be a loss to your company.

11. Be Patient. If you are in the middle of negotiations and significant decision are being made, don’t rush to finalize a decision in that meeting. Consider requesting a break to think it over and discuss with members on your sales team and schedule a follow up meeting.

12. Look At The Negotiation From Various Perspectives. Think about it from your prospects position and request the opinion of your sales manager or sales peers.

13. Make Sure You Are Talking To The Decision Maker. As sales professionals know, if you are not working with the decision maker, especially when it comes to negotiating the final deal, you are wasting your time.

14. Close Your Mouth. Learn to talk less and listen more. The more you listen and ask questions the better you will understand and be able to position your company effectively.

15. Provide Case Studies. If the prospective client has never worked with you before they may have some concerns. Bring written case studies of similar clients that your organization has helped. It will build credibility and help you initiate the partnership.

16. Remember To Give & Receive. If you are offering concession after concession without any commitments in return you are going to get run over in the negotiation. Remember that for each concession you make, there should be some commitment or concession made on the other side.

17. Be Optimistic, Confident & Positive. Expect more and receive more. Think big and aim high. It is easier to negotiate down, than up.

If this article was helpful for you, please share it. Thank you! Questions or Comments? Please feel free to contact me @JeremyUlmer on Twitter or Email me at JeremyJUlmer(@)gmail(dot)com.

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” – Paul Meyer

Post written by Jeremy J. Ulmer. Connect with me on LinkedIn.

In the world of sales, finding ways to increase productivity and get more done in less time is essential to achieving great sales results, making more commissions, working less, and having more personal free time.

Here are 10 sales coaching tips to boost your productivity to new levels:

1. Most Important Things First. The most important task you need to get done each day should take priority over all other tasks. However, we all know that interruptions can pop up and the important task often gets put off.

If you put the most import thing off until later in the day, they often don’t happen. Your goal should be to get your most important things done first thing in the morning before doing anything else.

2. Wake Up Earlier. Get up just 30 minutes earlier and you can get a jump start on some of your most important tasks for the day. Decide what you’d like to accomplish each morning, and design your routine around your most important tasks.

3. Streamline Information. Think about all the information you receive on a daily basis: emails, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog updates, newsletters, mailing lists, magazines, newspapers, and mail. Start to edit and remove anything that you no longer are using or benefiting from.

4. Clear Of Your Desk & Get Focused. Get rid of everything off your desk that you don’t absolutely need. Remove all distractions and focus on one thing at a time. With a clean and clear desk, it becomes much easier to be productive and organized.

5. Get To Work Early; Leave Early. Ever notice how much you get done when no one else is around? Consider coming into work a little early to start on your most important things without interruptions. The trick here is to make sure you set an end time to your day. So if you want to leave a 4:00PM, commit to it and it will also help you focus on getting more done before that time.

6. Schedule Your Meetings & Avoid Last Minute Meetings When Possible. Consider each situation, but in general, see if you can aim to always schedule your meetings instead of taking on the spot meetings in your office that will throw off your momentum. Remember that whatever is on your schedule for you to be focusing on, should be treated like a meeting that is already in progress.

7. Eliminate Non-Essential Work. You will only be productive in sales if you are working on activities that are going to move you towards your goals. Remove or delegate non-essential tasks from your to-do lists, and start to say no to new requests that are non-essential.

8. Do The Tough Stuff First. Do these first thing in the morning. If you put the tough tasks off, they will only become more and more difficult to accomplish.

9. Shut Off Your Internet Connection. Schedule times when you will be online to check email or research on the web. Working off-line can help you increase your productivity as you will be focusing on one task at a time without distractions. For many people, this one seems almost impossible, but challenge yourself to try it out and see what happens.

10. Get Passionate. If you truly care about what you are doing, you will work like a machine to get it done. It will flow and you will plow through your tasks without procrastination. Find the deeper meaning of accomplishing your goals and being productive. What will being more productive in sales enable you to accomplish, to do, to be?

Learn how our sales coaching programs and our customized sales seminars can help you or your organization increase your sales productivity even more!

If you liked this article and it was helpful for you, please share it…Thank you.

Post written by Jeremy J. Ulmer. Follow me on Twitter.

Excuse #1: “I Don’t Have Enough Time To Prospect or Focus on Sales Related / Dollar Productive Activities.”

Solution: Create Time.

Sales professionals of all levels and business owners who achieve extraordinary levels of success have days just as hectic as everyone else, right? Yet somehow they make prospecting a part of their daily or weekly activities.

So how do they do it? They create the time. You can instantly create time if you begin to plan ahead and stay committed. This means planning your days and weeks. One of the best time-creating techniques is to schedule prospecting or selling time on your calendar and delete unimportant activities.

Schedule your most important tasks earlier in the day to ensure they get done. Ask yourself, “Where am I wasting time?” Make sure you remove those activities from your daily schedule right away. Set up a recurring event for prospecting and don’t miss it. To be successful with this, be sure to eliminate your distractions.

Excuse #2: “I Can’t Stay Committed.”

Solution: Find Compelling Reasons For Your Actions.

There is a significant difference between intentions and action. The difference is commitment.

Our commitment to our goals leads us to achievement, even during the toughest times. There is a direct relationship between motivation and commitment. If you are really committed to making a change now in your sales or business results, create a sense of urgency.

You need reasons that are so compelling and so intense you must follow through. So right now, ask yourself the following questions and come up with the three reasons why you must commit to your sales growth goals.

• What will this cost me if I don’t make a change right now?
• What has this cost me so far in sales results, income, and overall success?
• If I do start prospecting effectively and on a regular basis, how will I feel about myself?
• How will this impact my sales career, my business, my life?
• What will I gain as a result of this new commitment?

Your answers to these questions will help you gain an immediate understanding of what you’re committed to and why!

Excuse #3: “I Don’t Feel Confident That I Will Succeed. This Is A Waste Of Time!”

Solution: Break down your sales and business goals into measurable steps.

Sometimes trying to accomplish sales goals seems so overwhelming, the immediate temptation is to give up before we even start. Ouch. That kills self-confidence. And it’s true; we can’t gain confidence until we take action. Yet, we don’t take action because we are afraid to fail. See the problem here?

Take, for example, the intimidating obstacle of facing your sales goals or business goals for the entire year. Now that’s paralyzing, isn’t it?

To gain confidence, you must break your goals down into measurable steps. For example, if want to win 12 new clients within 12 weeks, then you could set your goal for 1 new client per week. It just feels easier and more attainable this way.

You don’t have to focus on the entire goal; but instead take smaller, manageable steps. This gives you a tremendous sense of control and achievement.

By the time you are nearing the end of your first couple of weeks on your new prospecting or sales plan, despite the ups and downs in progress, you begin to feel more confident because you have experienced some results.

Suddenly, as the fear dissipates, you will discover new found confidence. And best of all, you will have achieved what you once thought was impossible—proceeding one step at a time.

Excuse #4: “I Don’t Know What To Say. I Don’t Know If I Am Delivering The Right Message or Value.”

Solution: Seek Support & Don’t Try To Do Everything On Your Own.

It is understandable to feel a little confused. You may feel overwhelmed and paralyized. There are so many sales techniques recommended by so many “sales experts”.  So, whose advice can you trust?

Are you tired of trying to sort through all the information on the internet, sales books, business articles and tips? Well, you can stop right now and keep yourself from chasing every sales technique or theory.

So how do you find the answers?

When seeking support on these topics, make sure you are working with someone with a proven record of producing top sales results. But that is not enough. Just modeling the approaches of a highly successful sales person isn’t enough. You can start there, but you must learn your own style, strengths, and how to use them. If you can develop your own personal selling style, you will never come across as “salesey,” which is the last thing you want to do.

Start by looking towards those with great success in this field and then challenge yourself to develop your own sales style. I help my clients develop their own authentic selling approach that takes into account what makes them unique, as they incorporate my proven methods and techniques. This combination of proven expert methods in conjunction with a personal selling style produces dramatic results.

The bottom line: Seek someone who has achieved the “extraordinary” results you desire, learn the “winning” methods, and then integrate them into your own personal strengths to develop your own genuine selling style.

By committing to turning these mistakes and excuses into powerful success strategies, you will begin to create extraordinary sales and business results!

Don’t wait, make a commitment to yourself today!

Post written by Jeremy J. Ulmer

As I was doing research on the sales coaching industry, I discovered there is a great deal of garbage about sales coaching on the internet. People who are posing as sales experts are infiltrating minds with myths that are absolutely false!

And, that’s exactly why I’ve written this article… To make some waves in my industry by debunking 10 of these myths right now.

Sales Coaching Myth #1: “Successful sales professionals and sales leaders do not need coaches.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Professionals have coaches and amateurs do not. Sales coaching helps the best get better, the good to become great, and the struggling to breakthrough.

Sales Coaching Myth #2: “I can coach myself for free or talk to my peers or sales manager.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Yes, you can and should talk to these people, but you will not get the same results you get from working with a professional sales coach. Your managers, peers, and friends will all have their own agenda, not be professionally trained in coaching skills, will be biased, and will not provide the same accountability or partnership that you receive from an external coach.

Sales Coaching Myth #3: “I get all the sales information I can possibly use right now from sales books, sales articles, and my sales manager.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Information and knowledge is helpful only if you can translate it into action. Coaching will help translate your knowledge, ideas, goals, and intentions into reality.

Sales Coaching Myth #4: “A sales coach is the same as a sales mentor.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Mentoring is important, but it is typically informal, open-ended, and the mentor is not professionally trained to best support you. Sales coaching provides clearly-defined goals that are created with you, learning, actions, professional support, motivation, focus, and on-going accountability.

Sales Coaching Myth #5: “Coaching is like going to therapy.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Therapy deals with the past and present. Coaches work with the present and future.
A coach’s role is to turbo charge your results, maximize your productivity and effectiveness. Coaching is based on partnership, goals, plans, and the alliance designed by the coach and client together. In therapy, the “treatment plan” is largely designed by the therapist.

Sales Coaching Myth #6: “Coaching fosters an unhealthy dependency on others.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Coaching helps clients to better self manage themselves, grow, and feel empowered, not dependent.

Sales Coaching Myth #7: “We do not need on-going sales coaching, we have a sales training program”
Sales Coaching Fact: Most sales training has a very short-term effect on performance and less than 15% of the information is retained and implemented. Sales Coaching provides on-going support, on-going results, growth, changes in behavior, attitude, implementation of new skills, new actions, accountability, improved productivity, and a customized approach. Bring a sales management coaching seminar to your organization to teach your sales management how to coach sales reps, or visit our sales coaching services to learn more about direct support for your sales team.

Sales Coaching Myth #8: “Coaching should only be a short-term solution.”
Sales Coaching Fact: A long-term partnership with the right sales coach will continue to add value for many years.

Sales Coaching Myth #9: “Sales Coaching focuses strictly on your sales career and professional life only.”
Sales Coaching Fact: The success in your professional life and personal life are all connected. The more balanced you are, the more energy you have, the more fulfillment you have in all areas, the more success you will experience. A good sales coach should be trained to support you holistically and ready to support you in all ways.

Sales Coaching Myth #10: “I need to be more organized or more successful before I hire a coach.”
Sales Coaching Fact: Coaching will help you get more organized and achieve more success faster than you can ever create on your own.

If all of these myths were true, sales coaching would have failed a long time ago. The fact is, the industry is expanding rapidly as individuals and organizations are looking for new ways to create more sales success, faster.

Sales coaching from a top level sales coach or from a sales leader who has attended a sales coaching seminar has proven to deliver remarkable sales results. It is our hope that by debunking these myths, you can find the right sales coach for yourself, organization, or sales management coaching seminar.

Post written by Jeremy J. Ulmer. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

1. Decide To Be Successful: Make the conscious choice to be successful. Own it now! Deciding to do something is the first step towards success. This is a critical step which is often overlooked.

2. Focus Your Mind: Get clear on what you desire. Ask yourself: What do I truly want? What does success look like to me? How will this achievement change my life, business or career? How can I use this success to make a difference for others? Understand what you want, why you want it, and what it will do for you.

3. Set Clear Goals: You may have heard of SMART goals before. The standard definition of SMART goals is as follows: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time Sensitive. I prefer the following definition: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Resonant, Thrilling.

4. Commitment: Make a commitment to yourself to have success. Find an accountability partner or hire a coach to help you stay on course. Remember, the “best” surround themselves with support. And there is no “trying” in commitment. As Yoda once said to Luke, Luke: “All right, I’ll give it a try” Yoda: “No. Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.”

5. Belief: This is sometimes the greatest challenge for some people to overcome to be successful. Most people have an entire series of self-limiting beliefs that will hold them back from success. Thoughts like, “I’m not good enough” or “I’m not smart enough” or “I can’t do this” are just a few of the self-limiting beliefs that people will often hold. I help my clients identify these thoughts and to shed these non-supportive beliefs, and replace them with beliefs that will help them to accomplish their goals.

6. Take Action: Put everything into play and execute your plans! Don’t let paralysis by analysis set in. Dive in, don’t hold back, and get started.

Go here: www.SalesCoachingHabits.com

Sales Coaching Sales Coach Sales Coaching Articles Sales Seminars

As a sales professional, sales leader or business owner, distractions can often be the main obstacle for achieving great success.

If you have too many distractions, you will never achieve your full potential.

It is important to continue to evaluate what sales activities will be most important to reach your goals. Then, you must focus on those activities first, and make a commitment to complete them each and every day without failure.

You must remove and minimize your distractions. You will then have the time to focus on what you have determined is most important.

Here are some tips on how to minimize common distractions:

Limit your number of social networks. Determine which social networking sites are most valuable to you. You may be a member of multiple forums, on line groups, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and will be invited to join other networks as well. Pick a couple that are most helpful for you and drop the rest.

Do not log into social networking sites while you are working. Save social networking for times when you are not at work.

Block time to check your email. When you are working on a task, focus on the task. Emails constantly flying into your inbox can be a constant distraction. Schedule specific times during the day to read and send emails.

Send fewer, shorter emails. Also, don’t become dependent on emailing versus picking up the phone. There is value in the personal touch.

Shut off notifications. Are you constantly getting pinged with an email, or tweet, or text or IM? When are you actually focused and present in the moment? Don’t forget that the most important time you have is right now. Consider at times completely shutting off your computer or turning off your smartphone.

Clear off your desk. Only keep what you truly need on it. Keep it neat and tidy. Do the same for your computer desktop.

Do one thing at a time. Multitasking can be totally counterproductive.

Do the tough stuff first.

Have a cut off time. Make sure you have set times to complete your activities as well as set times to stop working. Have you ever planned a trip where you left work early at 12:00 noon? Remember how much you got done before 12:00 noon because you knew you had to leave early that day? Exactly.

The next step is to put these items into action and start minimizing your distractions today. Also, consider making a list of all other distractions you may have.

By minimizing my own distractions, I was able to be a #1 sales performer within multiple fortune 500 organizations. Now, as a sales coach, I help support my sales coaching clients achieve similar success by providing specific solutions to challenges that are holding them back from extraordinary results.

Shorten Your Sales Cycle So You Can Win More Clients, Faster!

By Coach Jeremy J. Ulmer

As a sales professional, entrepreneur or business owner, being able to effectively establish new client partnerships and increase sales results quickly is vitally important. When sales are going great it can be very exciting! When you have a great month you are filled with sales motivation!

But, after a while, things slow down and you hit a wall. You find yourself chasing after prospects and wondering why it is taking so long to convert prospects into clients.

You’re stumped!

You start exploring different techniques and try to find a solution. But, no matter what you try, the results are the same and the sales cycle is a much longer process than what you would like.

So where do you turn when you are stuck in sales quicksand and can’t get your prospects to move forward?

Here’s How You Can Shorten The Sales Cycle and Win More Clients, Increase Sales and Profits with 2 Simple Strategies:

1. Determine, Uncover & Clarify Challenges
If a prospect is not clear about their challenges and the impact of these challenges, this will greatly slow down the entire sales cycle. This is because the client does not yet believe their challenge is significant enough to take action, and guess what, because of this, they won’t take action! It is a waste of time for you to give information before understanding their needs, goals, challenges and problems. You are presenting a “solution” to someone who doesn’t believe they have a “problem.”

So, what do you do about this? Ask a lot of questions! Ask open ended questions. Get curious and don’t assume you understand their problem or challenge no matter how long you have been in the industry. Dig in and really find out what is going on, and ask follow up questions that focus in on the greater impact of their challenges. Uncover the impact of the current challenges on both the organization and the individuals or groups you are selling to. Your questions will help them understand and verbalize that they have a challenge or problem. Now you have the information you need to explain how you can help solve their challenge.

If you find yourself talking more than 20% of the time during your sales meetings with prospects, stop yourself, and ask a question!

2. Always Set A Clear Next Step
Have you ever heard this before? “Thanks for your time today, your product looks great and we will get back to you soon.” Yet, you never hear back, and end up having to chase, follow up, and make multiple calls, send multiple emails to no avail. That is not fun for you, nor is it fun for the prospective client.

How do you solve this?

Well, if you are a great salesperson or great sales minded business owner, you don’t need to chase. You don’t need to pressure. You don’t need to persuade. Really. You need to set up a clear next step, and if your prospect is not ready to take the next step, they will tell you, and you will determine if they are a serious prospect or not, on the spot.

Remember, give your prospects an option to say, “No.” When you do this, all the pressure is taken off of you, and more importantly off of your prospect. That way, they do not feel like they are being “sold,” nor do they feel any pressure from you. Many of the sales coaching programs and sales coaches still are teaching the same old techniques developed decades ago that involve pressure and persuading. You do not need to do that anymore and it does not work.

Simply set up the next step at the end of your meetings. The next step could be a follow-up face to face meeting or a scheduled phone call for example. However, make sure the next step is moving the sales cycle forward and has a scheduled date, time, and location.

Map out your sales cycle and know what steps need to take place. Here is an example of a 5 step sales cycle: 1. Initial appointment, qualification, discovery, 2. Agreement to conduct an in-depth analysis, 3. Demonstration of service or product, 4. Contract review meeting, 5. Signed agreement.

At the end of each meeting, you should be setting up the next meeting and next actions. Explain the next steps you both will need to take to start working together. Map it out for them and provide them with a simple document that explains the next steps with clear time lines. Ask them to commit to the next steps along the way. Guess what happens if you do this effectively? You don’t need to “close” or persuade, the sale will be made, faster, naturally, and more effectively.

I truly enjoy the art of sales and sharing sales tips to sales professionals, sales leaders, sales experts, and entrepreneurs just like you. I am lucky to be able to live and breath my sales approaches everyday for my own business, as well as witnessing my clients putting these techniques into action and reaping the rewards! These 2 steps will help you shorten your sales cycle and experience dramatically improved sales results. Don’t wait to make these changes, take action now, and make a commitment to yourself. Want more ideas, tips, coaching, and support to shorten your sales cycle? Contact me for a free coaching consultation or subscribe for free tips below.

About the Author:
Sales Coaching & Business Coaching Expert, Jeremy J. Ulmer, has helped hundreds of sales professionals, sales leaders, businesses and entrepreneurs overcome sales and business challenges to achieve breakthrough results. Jeremy has been ranked a #1 sales performer in the U.S. for 4 years at two Global Fortune 500 Companies, is the former Director of Sales at the #1 Outsourced Sales Company in the U.S., and is a Featured Presenter on Sales Skills and Entrepreneurship at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. If you are ready to dramatically increase your sales or business results then subscribe for your Free Tips or request a Free Coaching Consultation at: http://www.CoachWithJeremy.com or visit Coach Jeremy’s Programs.