Breakaway Sales
Master the Four Secrets
Become a Breakaway Sales Pro: Explore my on-demand sales training, develop & mentorship to help you and your sales teams crush quota.
Step 2: BREAKAWAY SALES
“Nothing happens until something is sold. This axiom is older than dirt. Nonetheless, nothing could be more profoundly true. You can give me people, products, services, plans, money, and prospects but, without sales, I have nothing. Conversely, you can take everything away from me, and let me keep my sales force, and I’ll be back in one year.”
~Mike Kerrison, Landing On Your Feet
The Breakaway Sales Methodology
Step 1: Executive Interviews
I’ll spend two full days interviewing the executive team and a selection of your sales representatives. This will allow me to learn your business processes, sales processes, naming conventions, marketing structures, product emphasis, value proposition, competitive advantage, critical business issues, marketing, and business challenges. Once completed, I’ll be better equipped to shape the sales curriculum to your specific business environment. This creates a realistic “hands on” experiential learning process for your sales force. I become an insider and a trusted advisor. The interviews can be held via teleconference or on-site depending upon timing and budget considerations. A comprehensive training position paper is delivered at the conclusion of the engagement.
Step 2: Discovery and Assessment
I’ve developed a holistic assessment tool that provides quantitative and qualitative measurement as to the condition of each sales representative/sales manager, enabling me to receive a clear picture as to what needs to be worked on and the severity of the issues. A comprehensive diagnostic report for each sales representative will be delivered once the data is processed, and this assessment can fit with the existing performance guidelines that you already have in place. In other words, the assessment is complementary and should reinforce your current evaluation tools. The assessment takes about two hours to complete and the sales rep can complete it in their spare time. I send out a comprehensive letter introducing myself and the process to each sales rep. This of course is coordinated with your own internal announcement about the training program.
Step 3: Diagnostic Report
A diagnostic report will be delivered to senior management and sales managers outlining the results for each sales representative. The diagnostic output measures against the four ideal Breakaway Sales Disciplines – The Structured Sales Cycle, Interpersonal Buying Behaviors, Effective Personal Management, and Mental Toughness. The report will outline a recommended improvement plan for each sales representative designed to improve their performance, supported by the Mental Toughness Mini-Clinics for areas such as Objection Handling, Questioning & Listening, Negotiations, ROI, Presentation Skills, Time Management, and Buying Behaviors, for example. Think of the Diagnostic Report as a Myers-Briggs for sales people outlining 24 different sales profiles.
Step 4: Sales Manager Performance Training
As a result of the Diagnostic Report each sales representative and their manager will sign an informal performance improvement contract which incorporates the outcome of their 200% plan. This adds accountability, commitment, and collaboration to the improvement effort. A specific prescription will be administered to each sales manager designed to cure the shortcomings within the sales profiles, and I’ll collaborate with the sales management group to develop these individual improvement contracts. Metrics, measurements, and expectations are clearly stated in these contracts. Your existing evaluation documents can be utilized, or we can modify them to meet the Breakaway Sales program design. This step is completed in conjunction with the delivery of the Diagnostic Reports.
Step 5: Breakaway Sales Training Curriculum
The Breakaway Sales Training consists of four full-day sessions with an ideal clinic size of 20-50 sales reps. The sessions are highly experiential with customized role play providing the backbone for the learning process. The goal is to simulate real situations that the reps face in the market. I will work with senior leadership to develop the role play scenarios, and each session is equipped with workbooks, tools, and a professionally edited video of the entire course. Managers will play an important coaching role to provide integration and continuity.
Step 6: Breakaway Sales School Online Course
Breakaway Sales School online course extends the classroom experience, helping reps maintain their learning and create lasting transformation within the sales organization. This is a pre-configured comprehensive review of the four Breakaway Performer Disciplines. Each of the four areas has its own standalone video experience and workbook/templates with a detailed review of the major learning points. Full editing and formatting is provided to professionalize each video. This video set will provide your company with a permanent library offering future training for new sales reps 24×7 every single day. The Online Course is a copyright protected library. You will receive an enterprise license with permission to copy and use for your sales force only.
Step 7: Annual One Day Tune-up and Boot Camps
The primary purpose of the annual tune-up is to drive motivation and enthusiasm within the culture of the sales team. We will also use this session to introduce new best practices within selling and to stay current with technology and productivity aids. These sessions can be combined with your annual kick-off or quarterly sales meetings.
This comprehensive set of steps will drive your sales team to the next level by identifying the improvement areas for each sales person, applying targeted and customized learning to these areas and identifying and eliminating unproductive resources.
Step 8: The Mental Toughness Sustaining Program
All participants that have completed the workshop will reinforce what they have learned and how to apply it to their career and life through a series of lectures and homework. Every month for 6 months they will meet as a collective group for a 1 hour and 30-minute program facilitated by Mike Kerrison. The program will have a 30-minute lecture followed by a facilitated discussion as to the daily application of the Breakaway Sales and Mental Toughness principles. Participants will be able to share their personal experience with these new tools and how they have created success and productivity in their job. This process requires homework between sessions, self-education and will reinforce everything that they have learned. The idea is to drive permanent healthy change within your organization. New participants may join in at any time and will not be hindered due to late enrollment. Your sales managers will be groomed to carry the program forward after the Sustainability Process is completed.
Mastering the Four Secrets of the Breakaway Sales Performer
The Breakaway Sales Training Curriculum
Mastering the Structured Sales Cycle (Day One)
The sales structure is composed of flexible steps and tactics that are visible, logical, and repeatable. The rep learns to master the rules of the structure without appearing canned or rehearsed but instead authentic and polished. The structured sales cycle works for both short and long-term sales cycles, with simple and complex products, with senior executives, middle management, and casual buyers. It works on the phone, face-to-face, in groups, and in any industry. Reps don’t have to learn four or five different ways to sell, depending on the industry or product or buyer class. They have to learn only one way, and if they learn it well, they’ll have it their entire career.
Mastering Buying Behaviors (Day Two)
Understanding buying behaviors and interpersonal styles and how these styles impact your sales call is enormously important to become a breakaway performer. A sales rep’s ability to influence people and speed the sales process is tied directly to these skills. The sales rep discovers his or her natural interpersonal style using a scientifically researched testing model. They develop a unique understanding of the style of the buyer and how to recognize them. Now the sales rep can become highly versatile and adapt his or her style to fit the way people want to buy. The rep is now in control and enjoys a tremendous competitive advantage.
Mastering Time and Territory Management (Day Three)
The sales rep learns to master the “nuts and bolts” of running a territory while maximizing their personal productivity. Research has proven that most sales people spend less than 10% of their time in front of customers. This is due to weak practices, inability to leverage technology, poor planning, and inadequate sales processes. Time is the sales rep’s number one natural resource, and the only resource that is not renewable. This session focuses on today’s best time management practices which are the prerequisite for reengineered sales processes. They will learn how to gather, process, organize, deploy, and measure work flow. They will also learn how to build an opportunity map and how to create a 200% plan – a focused strategy designed to double their sales performance. These two skills are mandatory for the breakaway performer.
Mastering Mental Toughness (Day Four)
The sales rep learns the mental toughness secrets of the world’s greatest performers from various fields. This session introduces my thirty-year collection of performance profiles. The training compares the average person’s thought processes to the behaviors and attitudes of the world class performer. From there we can teach the disciplines required to build sustainable mental toughness. I recommend two days of training followed by a break of approximately four weeks and then the final two days.
How was Breakaway Sales developed and why does it work?
During the twenty years that I ran my companies, having a world-class sales force remained at the core of my business philosophy. This philosophy allowed me to build three nationally recognized, high growth organizations. My first company, with a 1,849% five-year compounded growth rate made the distinguished Inc. 500 list. My second was ranked the second fastest growing company in the state of Minnesota by City Business magazine. All these accomplishments were tied to a world-class sales organization.
I personally trained all my reps using my unique selling method – an amalgamation of my IBM sales training, five years in the field where I received rookie of the year with IBM, countless refresher courses, a shelf of well-digested, dog-eared books on selling, and two decades of owning highly successful sales driven companies. During that time, I constantly looked for ways to improve my selling skills. Teaching sharpened my own skills and gave me a close look at the strengths and weaknesses of each rep. I was able to establish an insider language with the sales force which saved time, identified problems early, and helped build trusting relationships. Since then, through the establishment of Mike Kerrison International in 2001, I have trained over 20,000 sales representatives and my combined programs have reached over 400,000 people.
Mastery of a professional selling system requires many skills besides selling skills. It requires interpersonal style detection, strategic planning, product knowledge, industry expertise, competitive awareness, organizational skills, territory and time management skills, and mental toughness. You can make an okay living by collecting a couple of these. But, if you want to become an expert, the highest of achievers, you must master all of them. Combine these skills with the desire to win, and you have a Breakaway Sale Performer. Creating this kind of sales team is a leader’s greatest challenge. Once created, which will take time and this proven development model, your company will dominate your chosen markets.
I sustain the impact from the powerful Breakaway Sales training with Breakaway Online Schools that put the power of this training at your rep’s fingertips every day. Learn more about my innovative Breakaway Online Schools.
I’m ready when you are. Let’s talk about building your Breakaway Strategy.
With an empowered sales team, it’s time to align your managers to high performance strategies and outcomes. Learn how I do it with Part 3 of the Breakaway Performance Roadmap, Sales Manager Training.
