Posted by Tom Rothrock on Fri, Apr 30, 2010 @ 03:35 PM
Last year, you made a proposal to your senior management to invest in a software application that you believed would provide your sales team the horsepower to take them to the next level. Your proposal was unanimously and enthusiastically approved and you were told to "run with it."
Working with your IT and sales teams, you proceeded on implementation of the application. There were a few bumps in the road but your team appeared to embrace the application at your on-line kick-off session. A few of them were quiet but were the ones who were typically reserved.
After several months, the application's usage statistics looked promising but there were some laggards. You drilled down on the stats and found it was the ones who were quiet during your kick-off presentation. You then followed up with each and identified their obstacles. Some had clear cases of "application anxiety" while others were "reluctant adopters" who got by with the absolute minimum by just "going through the motions" by logging on sporadically and infrequently.
You had your IT people follow up with the "application anxiety" crowd to address their issues, which were largely technical. You got together with the "reluctant adopters," explaining how their consistent usage of the app would make them more productive and, at the end of the day, they'd have more money in their pocket. You also emphasized how the application wasn't a "make-work" project or a management control mechanism to "spy on them." You'd heard those stories through the grapevine.
Because of the laggards, your ramp-up and full implementation of the application was delayed by a full quarter and the project exceeded budget, which raised some eyebrows in your management ranks.
Does any of this sound familiar? If so, here are some steps to take early on to avoid the laggards from dragging down your implementation:
- Establish and publish enterprise-wide acceptable usage standards and eliminate any "loopholes" which enable non-participation.
- Embed application usage within your sales team's job description along with appropriate notification/acknowledgement. This sends a clear message of "What's expected will be inspected."
- Include usage as a measurable performance expectation in the performance appraisals including inclusion in all of your formal written policies.
- Engage users consistently during the early phase of your implementation and listen carefully for any negativity or poor attitudes. If encountered, isolate and address them immediately. If you don't, your project goals will be stalled and delayed.
- Identify and circulate user "success stories" frequently throughout the initial implementation; the more the better.
- Draft a sales automation policy defining the standards and expectations for application usage and stress how that usage is mandatory, not optional.
Remember it's all about EXPECTATIONS and ACCOUNTABILITY. As a manager, it's up to you to clearly communicate consequences for lapses in adapting to any new application.
Photo credit: Pink Chick
Posted by Tom Rothrock on Tue, Oct 06, 2009 @ 05:57 PM
Several of our previous blogs have talked about identifying, interviewing, and using assessments to hire top performing sales reps for your sales team.
So let's say by now you've enacted those points, built a benchmark and have introduced assessments to your recruiting and hiring process. Further, you've brought aboard a strong "A Player" who's really making the numbers happen and is going to make plan before year-end in a territory where that's never occurred before.
Congratulations!!
Next, by capitalizing on your use of assessments, we'll move forward on how you can use them to strengthen your sales team beyond the hiring process. [Don't worry, if you haven't used assessments yet, you'll benefit from the discussion, too.]
How do you build strength?
Seasoned sales managers and, yes, veteran coaches of every sport will tell you, "Observe, coach, observe, coach, observe, coach." You spend every available moment in the field observing your team and stressing the use of sales strategies and techniques to advance the sales cycle in pre-call and post-call coaching sessions.
The use of an assessment will give you a "heads up" on your coaching efforts by telling you what areas to focus on and what areas are of a lesser concern that can be set aside for now.
For example: The assessment data tells you your new "A Player" is very social. In sales, we know that's a good thing as we'd prefer having our prospects and customers relating to a personable, outgoing rep instead of a remote, indifferent one.
However, your rep's need for social interaction can stymie sales performance. If the rep takes too much time "making friends instead of sales," sales will suffer as the result of too many "howdy calls" instead of executing calls with a clear sales objective. There are also prospects and customers who'd rather stick to business and forgo rapport-building. Your rep needs to know the difference between the two and react and respond accordingly.
A properly structured assessment report will identify characteristics like these and provide you coaching steps to overcome them.
Who Moves Up and When?
Every sales manager knows that at some point in time, they'll get asked, "Who's your successor?" When you do, you'd better be prepared with an answer. That question comprises a big part of our job responsibilities and planning succession is a critical process to ensure the continued success and growth of your sales team.
When planning succession moves, you'll need insights into your candidates beyond the scope of their current assignment. Your assessment data will help you out here, too.
Many sales organizations have promoted their top performing sales reps to sales managers, based on the logic that the rep's performance can be duplicated and translated in the managerial role to their new subordinates. This approach has worked in some cases but, in others, it has not.
The challenge is that a sales manager's role takes on aspects which are opposed to the classic sales rep function. For one, there's an administrative reporting responsibility to assume that presents a struggle for many former reps to address.
There's also the issue of structure. Reps generally are autonomous and independent while a large part of a manager's job involves enforcing policy which can present a transitional challenge for the new sales manager.
As in the case of our coaching example, an assessment on a managerial candidate will tell you if the candidate is "cut out" for the managerial function. Your starting point - as in the case of indentifying our top performing sales reps - will be to establish a benchmark for your managerial position that your candidates can be measured against.
Then, your assessment report will tell who you who is up for the challenge and who needs more "polish." Again, you'll be spending time developing those who'll be likely candidates as opposed to those who're not.
If I can aid you in using assessments for building your sales team strengths and depth, please do contact me at precallpro.com.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ggvic/
Posted by Victor Watts on Tue, Sep 29, 2009 @ 04:14 PM
Okay, the headline metaphor may be a bit of a Olympic-sized literary stretch...but you have to admit, the visual of a coach watching her gymnasts compete is not too dissimilar to a manager trying to coach a diverse sales team.
Let's face it, your team is made up of individuals:
- With different talents, strengths and weaknesses;
- That have divergent support needs;
- That are often in remote locations.
If that's not challenging enough for a coach, it gets considerably more difficult when the commission checks may not be quite as big as they once were. But one thing is for certain, how you manage, lead and enable your sales force today will determine what kind of issues you will be faced with tomorrow. 
Sales Is Not Always A Team Sport - But The Team Still Needs To Win!
On one level, it seems like a contradiction in terms, doesn't it? But a good coach knows that a team is made up of unique individuals. So then, why do we so often see corporate incentive and retention programs rolled out with a one-size-fits-all structure and mentality? Based on what I've seen in corporate America, it's because that's the easy way out.
What's the old management saying?
"I love a hungry sales person with two mortgages, three cars and an expensive boat and a base salary woefully inadequate to meet the need."
As a consequence of that mentality, the typical corporate retention and incentive strategy is something along the lines of establishing a performance-based bonus program. Sell more - make more. Simple. Everyone's happy - right?
Wrong. (And I won't even get into the issue of how those goals are typically set.)
While I won't disagree that I look for money motivated sales folks, have you ever seen one single survey of sales people that indicates that money is their number one concern?
Didn't think so.
Don't get me wrong, money is a key issue...it's just not the only or necessarily the top one. Let's assume that you've already got a reasonably good comp plan in place. Let's also assume that you're not currently having to... what's the corporate euphemism?...oh yeah, "right-size" the sales organization. If that premise is correct, then I'm going to suggest that it's an important time to find ways to recognize and support your key individuals. The goal is not only keeping your high performers, but also keeping them at high-performing levels!
We've Been Here Before...And If You Haven't, Pay Close Attention
So maybe you're saying,
"I don't have to worry about things like retention or recognition programs right now. These guys should feel lucky they even have jobs. And besides, there's no money for things like incentive programs or new sales enablement initiatives right now."
I hope that's not the case. It may very well be a pervasive corporate culture at the moment, but I would argue that's exactly the wrong way to look at things.
Believe it or not, we are beginning to emerge from the economic downturn. Yes, this one has been a doozy, and employment will be the lagging indicator, but economic cycles - to coin a phrase - are still cyclical. And your most valuable assets still get on the elevator every day.
When things do turn around - and they will - some of your best assets may not let the door hit them in the rear on their rush to get to their next job. It's time to pay attention. Remember, the best time to retain your best players are before you need to.
Parallel Bar Management Skills
We often talk in this blog about the emerging "sales enablement" tools and how they can help your team produce more and do so more efficiently. Not a bad thing to consider from a retention perspective either. High perfoming reps in particular will appreciate it and use them! Heck, some of the Sales 2.0 tools can even help you coach (not just manage!) your players. I applaud those companies with enough vision to recognize the significant ROI of making that kind of move now. But that's just part of the managerial picture.
As a sales executive, you are operating in critical times. A time where your best management skills need to be working in parallel with the longer-range plans and goals. Maintaining and building the morale of their sales team takes a lot of effort. And this is not news, but individuals like to be treated...well, individually.
As We Focus On The Pitch, It's Easy To Lose Focus On The Pitcher
Alright, I know. I'm mixing metaphors here. (At least it's still a sports metaphor!)
Have you found yourself so focused on the need to close the deal and hit your numbers that you've neglected what you know about Sales Management 101? If so, remind yourself of a few of the basics and pull a few of these moves out of the tried-and-true toolkit. Yes, it takes more time and energy to manage this way but, trust me, in the long run you'll be glad you did.
-
Catch people doing something right! Do you remember the first time your boss pulled you aside and said "good job!" Remember when he mentioned your name at a sales meeting for something you did well or for the good idea you had? Doesn't have to be a big deal. But catching people doing something right is still one of the most powerful management tools in your management toolkit. Reach for that one as often as you can!
-
Discuss career pathing. Maybe the current economic times make the idea of talking about a positive career path with your subordinate seem like a silly waste of time. Heck, you might even be worried about your own career path! Well now's the best time to talk up a positive future. Just like Vince Lombardi said, "Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence." (Oops, another sport just entered the blog building.)
-
Review reporting demands. You might feel powerless in this area because of management expectations, but I encourage you to give it a go. Your sales people will certainly appreciate it. Take a look at the reporting and administrative requirements placed on the sales team. See anything that can be minimized or eliminated? Still having a weekly sales call to regurgitate what should be in the CRM? Worse yet, are your people shackled by a CRM that has been so over-engineered that you're having reps spend hours each day just trying to keep up with data input demand?
It's about productivity - not re-productivity. Find the extraneous and the duplicitous and eliminate it! To quote Yoda: "Necessary are the battle reports you need, but get the soldiers you must beyond the weeds."
Good luck...and heads up coach, there's a game on!
Photo credits:
azzurri_nr1 http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajacied/2772283192/
Krachel http://www.flickr.com/photos/krachel/2609725004/
Posted by Todd Kasper on Fri, Aug 28, 2009 @ 07:20 AM
What to Do When You Don't Have All Year
We've all been there before - we know there's something we need to do for an extra "boost," but we just don't have the time (or budget, bandwidth, etc.) to make it happen. With that situation in mind, here are five actionable, easy, and cost-effective steps you can take to increase your sales force's effectiveness right now:
#1: Leverage Sales 2.0 resources
Some Sales 2.0 tools can be put to use immediately.
Are your reps having trouble reaching prospects? Try Jigsaw. It's free to sign up and takes just a few minutes to learn. The paid versions are even better.
Looking for a way to quickly find news and insights on your prospects and customers? Try Google Alerts - simply enter the company's name and create an alert - it's free and it can't get any easier. Alternatively, take a look at InsideView - it interfaces with many CRMs and integrates research and data from many different sources.
Your sales team should also use their social media accounts (i.e. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.). These are extremely valuable tools for discovering customer insights and competitor intelligence, along with connecting and building relationships. Find the ones that are most useful for your organization (and the ones that your customers use) and get started!
#2: Prepare better
I'm biased of course, but it's a fact that pre-call planning helps sales rep performance. In our survey of top-performing sales professionals, these reps told us that the three key benefits of pre-call planning are: (1) greater control of the sales process, (2) more effective use of time, and (3) better customer-specific need discovery. Do you think increasing performance in these areas would help improve your sales force effectiveness?
Do you need to have a formal pre-call planning process? In the long-run, the answer is probably "yes", but we're not talking about the long run here - we need actionable steps you can take now.
To that end, make sure your team is clearly identifying the objective of the call they are going to make. What key data points do they need to uncover? What questions might the customer ask? How will these questions be answered? Make sure your reps are going beyond the standard web research and purchase history pre-call due diligence.
Once you get started on these ideas, you can begin to implement something more formal for the long-run.
#3: Take a look at your sales efficiency
As a sales executive, your job is to maximize the return on the investments (ROI) and assets (ROA) that your company has entrusted you to manage. Are you as a sales executive squeezing as much revenue as possible out of each dollar you are given to manage?
For example, take a look at (what's left of) your budget - are you getting the maximum return on every dollar that is being spent? Can you redeploy budget dollars in order to increase overall return on this money that will be spent between now and the end of the year?
Need help? Let us know. We can help you find out your team's sales efficiency index and share ideas for improvement.
#4: Get back to basics
What are the "fundamentals" for success in your business? Calls per day? Face-to-face meetings with prospects and customers? Pre-call planning?
Sometimes just focusing on the basics leads to an increase in performance. Tony Gwynn, 8-time batting champion and statistically one of the most consistent hitters in the history of baseball, hit balls off of a batting tee daily during his career.
What do you and your team need to do on a regular basis in order to be successful? What is your team's batting tee?
#5: Set expectations
While the previous four actions can be done now, they will still involve commitment on the part of your sales team.
Set expectations now for performance and usage of these steps, as these expectations will both give you points of accountability and a foundation from which you can grow your team's performance.
Now get started!
Break out of the summer mindset and get results between now and the end of the year. Not only will these action items improve your team's performance, but they will also help you identify even more opportunities for improvement.
Photo credit: Jon_Marshall
Need Other Ideas?
Click here to find out how your team's preparation skills compare to the world's best, and what you can do about it.
It's free.
Posted by Todd Kasper on Tue, Aug 04, 2009 @ 07:27 AM
A lesson from Michael Phelps...
This past weekend, I watched with amazement as Michael Phelps for the most part dominated the FINA Swimming World Championships in Rome. Phelps won five gold medals, and perhaps his most impressive performance was being the first swimmer to break 50 seconds in the 100m Butterfly, supposedly racing in suit technologically inferior to that of his competitors.
As if that wasn't enough, during the championships, he passed Mark Spitz's mark for the most world records - Phelps now has 37, and if last week is any indication, he's nowhere near done.
Watching this performance reminded me of an interview that Phelps gave to Matt Lauer for the Today Show shortly before the Summer Olympics in Beijing last year, when he famously won eight gold medals.
In some of the footage that was apparently edited out (see below), is a quote by Phelps about having just set five world records at last year's world championships, shortly before the Olympics.
When asked by Lauer if setting world record after world record ever gets "ho-hum," Phelps responded: "It means you're improving," then paraphrased USA teammate Ian Crocker, saying, "You never want to train a whole year and not get better."
Phelps added, "It helps me to judge where I am, and if I'm able to get faster at the end of the year, then obviously I'm doing something right."
...what do we learn?
Few aspects of life reflect the world of sales as well as sports. The lessons learned by athletes on the playing field (or in this case in the pool) translate to lessons learned by sales professionals and sales managers in the conference room, on the phone, or in front of the customer. Michael Phelps teaches us that even if we are on the top of our game, we still need to keep improving, because you never want to waste a year.
In his book "Winning Every Day," famed college football coach Lou Holtz says he keeps a saying on his desk that reads, "I'm not what I want to be, I'm not what I ought to be, I'm not what I'm going to be, but thank God, I'm not what I used to be."
Think about this quote. What are you doing for your sales team as a whole to make sure that they are getting better every day? How about for the team as a unit? How are you making yourself better?
In a world of software, metrics, and process improvement, sometimes increasing sales force effectiveness is as much about attitude as anything else.
Video credits: ana4182
Learn More About the Best Reps
Read what top-performing sales professionals had to say about their sales call preparation habits.
Download a summary of the top sales professionals survey.
Posted by Tom Rothrock on Fri, Jul 24, 2009 @ 10:31 AM
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bufferchuck/
Sales managers have long struggled with defining the characteristics of top sales reps and have frequently used the old saying, "You'll know when you see them" to do so.
That saying recalls a question a sales manager once asked us, "I've got a great rep who runs rings around the rest of the team. What does that rep do that the others don't?"
There's been quite a bit written on this question, both in the sales management and behavioral science circles. Since this is a sales blog, we'll focus our effort there.
Aside from the obvious - which are your rep's monthly, quarterly and yearly sales figures which tell if quota was met, exceeded - or not - part of our answer lies in what we'll call the "personality mix" - those traits which point to a individual's potential for success or failure in sales.
But how do you do that?
The first thing to do is to establish a profile of common characteristics of strong salespeople. While there are some variations to the needs particular to your sales environment, it's generally agreed that successful salespeople are;
Enterprising: Salespeople are leaders. They like to drive people and events from start to finish, especially their sales cycles. They're doers more than thinkers and are interested in the "big picture" than the details. Also, being true entrepreneurs, they're comfortable with risk and take ownership of outcomes, both good and bad.
Sociable: In sales, it's all about people so to be a success, your salespeople must like helping others and working with teams. They must communicate well, thrive on human interaction and prefer talking with people over working with machines or data. If they don't, they're better in a cube working on lines of code.
- Assertive: The best salespeople exhibit limitless energy and don't let themselves to be stalled or blocked when advancing their sales cycle. They can intuitively sense when they need to take control and have the ability to rebound from setbacks, too. The top salespeople are the ones on your team who're restlessly asking "What's next?" and are ones who're never content unless they're moving forward.
Take a moment and using the characteristics above, match them to your top performers. You'll find that your top performers share these characteristics. Once you've established that, your next step is to use your "Top Performer Profile" as a "best practices" hiring tool. We'll talk about that in a later post.
Posted by Victor Watts on Mon, Jul 20, 2009 @ 01:45 PM
Corporate leadership is based on basic fundamentals...
...and it often comes down to focusing the efforts of followers on such nuts and bolts like:
A. Listening to customers;
B. Producing quality outcomes and products, and;
C. Motivating employees to do the right things.
Sales Leaders - The Same Principles Apply!
The same basic leadership objectives may be applied to sales management. But anyone who's ever been a sales manager knows that getting all their sales people to consistently do the right things is a constant and significant challenge. And I don't think any successful sales manager will disagree with the idea that planning for an important sales call is one of the keys to getting and growing the business.
But how many of you truly believe that there is consistency among the sales staff when it comes to the quality and the messaging of that planning? ...I didn't think so.
Try This...
Before your next sales conference or staff conference call: Send out an email to your team and ask them to describe how they normally prepare for a sales meeting with a key account. Ask things like:
- How long does it take you to adequately prepare for an important call?
- What are the elements of your plan?
- What is the unique selling or value proposition that you use?
- Do you plan the questions you will ask in advance or do you just "wing it?"
- Have you thought through what objections you might face and how you will handle them?
- Do you always plan a meeting objective?
And how about...
- Do you carefully consider and plan how you will close against that meeting objective?
Based on my 25+ years of sales management experience, I think I can safely say you will be surprised by the wide variance in responses you will get. Or maybe you won't be surprised. Either way, I'd love to hear back on what you learn by completing that exercise.
And unless you're already making sure that pre-call planning is a key element of your team's sales process, I'm willing to bet that a little leadership guidance along these lines - supported with some very clear management expectations - will go a long way to getting those sales numbers where you'd like them to be!
Happy hunting!
Photo credit: coloradohousechurch
Top Sales Professionals National Survey
Learn more about what national top-performing sales representatives had to say about their precall preparation habits.
Download a free summary of the top sales professionals survey.
Posted by Todd Kasper on Thu, Jul 16, 2009 @ 10:32 AM
Earlier this spring, we conducted a global survey of top-performing sales professionals (defined as being in the top 20% relative to their peers) in order to examine the pre-call planning habits of these high performers. By conducting the study, we reached the following five conclusions about top-performing sales professionals, some of which are not likely to be a surprise (and some may be):
- Pre-call planning is critical to achieving success
- The key benefits of pre-call planning to top-producers are: greater control of the sales process, more effective use of time, and better customer-specific need discovery
- Top-performers prepare better than their peers
- Top-performers say that if they could improve how they prepare, they could sell even more
- They'd do pre-call planning more often if it took less time
Show Me the Money!
What was very striking, however, was the difference in responses between top reps who listed "increased income" as a benefit of pre-call planning (we'll call these people collectively the "Income Crowd") versus those who did not list income as a benefit (the "Non-Income Crowd"):
- The Income Crowd placed a higher level of importance on pre-call planning (9.00 versus 7.68 - on a scale of 1 to 10)
- The Income Crowd tends to spend more time preparing for customer interactions than the Non-Income Crowd
- 78% of the Income Crowd peforms internet research (website, financials, etc.) on customers before meetings, versus only 41% for the Non-Income Crowd
- 91% of the Income Crowd respondents identify the desired outcome of the call/meeting beforehand (versus 73% for the Non-Incomers). The same numbers applied to creating a written list of questions to ask during the meeting.
- Additionally, 88% of the Income Crowd respondents say that they use pre-call planning better than their lower-performing peers. Only 58% of the Non-Income Crowd shares this sentiment.
Clearly, there is a link between (1) recognizing increased personal income as a benefit of being better-prepared for customer meetings and (2) the quality of the preparation by sales professionals for those meetings. Even among top-quintile performers, we see striking differences in the way these professionals approach pre-call planning.
What's in it for Me?
So what does this mean for you? You should examine the views that your sales professionals have regarding pre-call planning and the benefits they perceive that they get out of being prepared for a key customer call or meeting. Ask your reps what they see as "in it for them" and see how many say that pre-call planning will help their personal income. If a large portion of your sales team sees extra cash for them as a benefit, congratulations! If not, you may want to consider addressing pre-call planning at your next sales meeting.
We're all busy, especially sales professionals trying to make a living in a tough economy. But why not spend a few extra minutes preparing to help making that living a little easier?
Photo credit: AMagill
Top Sales Professional Survey
Learn more about what top-performing sales professionals had to say about their preparation habits.
Download a summary of the top sales professionals survey.