Posted by Jim Kasper on Wed, Jul 29, 2009 @ 11:31 AM
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A Few Questions You Must Ask Yourself When Onboarding New Sales Reps:
- How much more confidence would a new sales rep exhibit if he/she were able to leverage and implement the best practices of your top reps immediately on their very first call?
- What would it mean to a new sales rep's production, if they could become totally prepared for sales call success on each call with only a couple of minutes of preparation?
- How valuable would it be to your field sales managers, if they could quickly preview a "remotely located" new sales rep's sales call plan and make adjustments prior to the call?
- What would all of this mean to your sales organization in achieving your sales goals?
You spend thousands of dollars recruiting and hiring each new "A" player sales representative.
You spend thousands more onboarding and training the new rep on product, procedures, policies, and sales process. Besides that, you pile on more money for your field sales managers to travel with, observe, and coach your new rep. The salaries and lost sales associated with hiring and training a new sales person are basically "sunk" costs and are unrecoverable.
These "sunk" costs also include the time and money it takes for a new sales representative to move from the conclusion of the onboarding process to the point of full sales productivity. This specific time period is commonly referred to as sales representative "ramp-up" time.
The constant objective you strive to achieve with new sales reps is reducing ramp-up time to full productivity, thereby limiting the "sunk" costs.
Until recently, the only opportunity for ramp-up time compression occurred during the recruiting process. Many companies try to hire successful industry experienced reps to cut ramp-up time. Most of the time it is costly and industry experienced reps are set in their ways.
In a recent survey of global sales executives, representing companies ranging from $100 million to $3 billion (USD), almost 6 out of 10 said one of the major benefits of pre-call planning was reduced ramp-up time.
When combined with sound product/service training, pre-call planning can reduce new hire sales rep onboarding time to full productivity by between 30% - 50%. To most businesses, this means:
1. A higher probability of achieving forecast
2. Lowering cost of sales
3. Reducing turnover in customer base when a sales representative leaves
4. Eliminating tens of thousands of dollars in lost opportunity costs
How much more revenue would the practice of pre-call planning for new sales reps bring to your organization?
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Posted by Tom Rothrock on Fri, Jul 24, 2009 @ 10:31 AM
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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.
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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.