Team Alpha 375

How to Add Value to One of Your Greatest
Possessions: Your Selling Career

Have you ever noticed salespeople, who given the same opportunity,
consistently outperform all others? There are many factors that distinguish top
performers from average performers. Among the most important characteristics
among top performers, are their ability to demonstrate credibility and confidence
in communicating with customers.

This point was well articulated by the great Arthur Ashe who said, “One important
key to success is self confidence. An important key to self confidence is
preparation.” For printing sales professionals, confidence can be obtained and
enhanced through superior knowledge of business, printing, technology,
customer environments and marketing.
Continuous Training Builds Confidence
In our training business, we are constantly amazed how many salespeople wait
for their company to provide training and education. Graphic Communications

Sales is a profession that requires constant skill and knowledge development. A
person’s profession is one of their greatest assets. It needs to be constantly
updated and nurtured. We cannot stress enough the importance of self education
in this rapidly changing market as a key differentiator for top salespeople.
Salespeople that fail to invest in themselves put their success and future at risk.
Just randomly going to the right seminars, reading the Printing News and
attending a conference or two is good, but certainly not enough. Waiting for your
company to train you, and provide you with educational opportunities, is a bad
strategy. Assuming your company has someone who manages training, most
training departments offer information six months after your competitors are
already “locked and loaded”.
Recently I had an opportunity to talk to Warren Werbitt of Pazazz Printing in
Montreal. He observed that at many of the industry seminars and workshops he
attends there are very few salespeople. We could not think of a good reason why
such a significant number do not feed and nourish one of their most important
possessions. There is nothing more important in one’s work life than their
profession.
You Are Responsible for Your Self Development
The only one, who can adequately ensure you are trained and educated to
achieve great results, is you. The best training is self managed. With all the
changes taking place in printing, there is no “one stop” shopping for education. A
highly motivated salesperson can use their workplace, their customers and a
wide variety of print-related training sources as their classroom for continual
learning.

The dilemma is what do printing salespeople really need to know and where do
they get that information. Wasting time on the wrong seminar or training program
is painfully expensive in time and energy. Just like clients, each salesperson has
to carefully judge the ROI of each minute spent in training or education

Three Steps to Build Your Self Learning Plan
If you have not already put your personal training plan together, this is a good
time to do it. Carefully determining what you need and how much time to spend
on training is the right approach. In building your plan here are three areas you
need to address:
1. What do you need to know to be successful? Here are few, but certainly
not a complete review, of areas to self assesses your personal strengths:
 Critical sales skills that are required to sell your products and services
such as prospecting techniques, public speaking, handling objections etc

 Knowledge of effective time management fundamentals
 Knowledge of substrates, estimation, project management, print
production, workflow, pre press, print related software etc.
 Knowledge of print-related jobs and applications

 Knowledge of alternative media such as social and digital media
 Knowledge of how customers buy print and digital media
 Ability to communicate an effective value proposition, generate a selling
proposal, conduct a needs survey
 Ability to present an effective ROI analysis
 Knowledge of print and cross media personalization
 Knowledge of current marketing trends and emerging markets
 Knowledge of finance and business fundamentals
2. Determine sources to get your training and education. This may be the
toughest part. The cost, ROI, priority and the time it will take are important
considerations. If you look, you will find plenty of places to go. Do not try to
meet all your needs in the first year. Focus on the vital few. Some self
education can be done on a continual basis such as meeting with mentors or
other top salespeople, attending local seminars, searching the Web for
related articles and videos, reading trade magazine articles on selected topics
or attending on-line industry webinars. There is plenty of information out
there.
3. Make a plan. We recommend writing a learning plan out for the year.
Simply put four columns a page. The first column is the area that you have
selected as a priority to develop. The second is what your specific objective
is. The third column should list when you plan to complete the training or is it
ongoing on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. And finally, where will you go, or
to whom will you work with, to achieve your objective. Review it, with you
manager, owner, mentor or someone you regard as a sales leader, and then
execute it. An organized approach will be easily self monitored and reviewed
to determine if you are getting what you need.
Training is important to give you specific skills to do your job. For instance,
knowing the details of your “Web to print” system is critical for you to help your
customers see the value of your company. Training seeks to drill down important
sets of facts or skills to allow salespeople to perform predictable behavior. In our
business, many salespeople want to be trained to make a good sales call, know
the details of variable printing, or simply see the different types of substrates for a
particular job. Many salespeople are happy just to be trained on whatever their
boss feels is important.
On the other hand, education is more a personal activity. It enables you to use
your intellect to apply what you have learned or have been trained to do. Both
training and education are important. The better educated someone is; the better
they can be trained. Top salespeople build their credibility and confidence with
continuous education. Research tells us that those who have confidence will
achieve better sales results than those who are less confident. In every training
event that we conduct at Intellective Solutions, we can often identify the top
salespeople by how they exhibit confidence and credibility, without knowing their
sales and profit performance.