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 Jim Kasper on Wed, Aug 19, 2009 @ 03:53 PM
Why "Cost of A Sales Call" Won't Work
Much discussion has taken place on blogs, social media sites, and boardrooms on the actual importance of measuring the cost of a sales call and sales efficiency. From the discussions that I have participated in, the most significant points of contention have been:
- Differing opinions as to the definition of a true sales call (f2f or a telephone conference)
- The varying formulas involved in calculating costs (many do include cost items like worker's compensation or interdepartmental overhead charges)
- Inclusion of such items as lost opportunity costs (no one seems to be able to clearly specify what these are or how to calculate them)
- The impact of erroneous reporting on calculating the mean cost of a sales call
- Tying the cost of a sales call into the concept of sales efficiency
Unique Formulas Present A Barrier
Every company seems to have a unique way of calculating its own cost of a sales call. For internal measure purposes, this may seem quite adequate. However, unique formulas do present a barrier to creating industry wide best practices thereby affording companies a true comparison to their own efficiencies against their competitive peers.
The "Sales Efficiency Index" Is A Better Method
The "sales efficiency index" (SEI) is a much better way and more meaningful method of ranking the sales efficiency of your individual sales reps and sales regions. It provides a uniform measure within industries for individual competitors to assess their performance against others. It totally eliminates:
-
Need to define sales call
-
Erroneous sales call reporting
-
Impact of lost opportunity costs
SEI Is A Universal Formula Based on Good Accounting Practices
Sales efficiency indices are calculated using a universal formula that focuses on good accounting practices to determine true ROI. SEI is a indicator with which you can stack rank your sales team by efficiency. Also, SEI should be at the top of your dashboard on your CRM reporting tool.
Photo Credit: Hribar
Want to Know Your Team's Sales Efficiency Index?
Click here to find out more and get started. Learn how you can use this data to sell more...more efficiently.
Posted by Tom Rothrock on Wed, Aug 12, 2009 @ 06:06 PM
How Do You Know Who's Really Behind The Mask?
In our earlier discussion, we pointed out the predominant characteristics of top performing salespeople. Of course we know there are others which positively contribute to a rep's performance not mentioned here. For now, we're focusing on 3 key characteristics which appear below with a brief description:
Enterprising: Independently competitive, takes on initiative and risk, has personal ownership or "stake" in outcomes. Tends to "ask for forgiveness instead of approval."
Sociable: Conversant and comfortable across a broad array of business and social settings; easily builds rapport and readily interacts with all types of people.
Assertive: Leads more than follows; is confident, comfortable and competant in directing people as well as the course of events. In the sales environment it's mandatory in any sales professional's ability to advance their sales cycle.Now equipped with these characteristics, you're certainly wondering...
"How do I know the candidates I'm talking to have them...or don't?"
That's the easy part - just like good sales professionals, we ask! Listed below are some interview questions to help you do that:
Enterprising:
- While on a sales call with a prospect, you encounter an issue that's outside of your authority but must be addressed to close the sale. Do you: a) execute to advance the sale or b), wait for approval from higher authority?
- When in competition, what lengths do you go to to win?
- When sales goals are not achieved, who's responsible?
Sociable:
- Describe the relationship building skills you have used to successfully achieve your sales goals.
- How would you build rapport with a remote, indifferent prospect on a initial call?
- What types of things have you done in the past to retain and expand business from existing accounts?
Assertive:
- Describe an example when you closed a particularly difficult sale by using your persuasion skills.
- Using examples from your experience, explain how a salesperson’s tenacity impacts the outcome of the sales process.
- When in the sales environment and while engaging a prospective customer, tell me how you a sense of urgency.
- Demonstrate for me how you'd handle a indecisive prospect who is stalling your sales cycle. Specifically, I’m interested in the approaches and the words you’d use to move them forward.
By carefully gauging your candidates' responses to these questions, you'll be better prepared to tell if they're the "real thing" or merely saying "what they think you want to hear."
Armed with the answers to your questions and then comparing them to the experience and accomplishments cited on their resumes, you'll be well on your way to hiring your next "top performer - not just another "great pretender!"
We'll be talking about other tools available to you in order to accomplish this - and more - in a future blog. Stay tuned!
Photo Credit: esper.art.br
http://www.flickr.com/photos/xper/3350897632/
Posted by Victor Watts on Fri, Aug 07, 2009 @ 10:13 AM
Managing What Can't Be Measured?
I know...I know...you can't manage what can't be measured. It simply flies in the face of the age-old axiom. But I'll bet that if you're in sales management, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
Change management is often as much art as science and is generally filled with a playground that is never lacking for diverse personalities... and this is particularly true if you're trying to effect a sales culture transformation!
As an example, let's use the almost universal bandwagon shift to a "consultative sales" or "solution selling" methodology. We've all successfully made that transformation. Right?
Okay, maybe not everybody has traversed the river yet with all boats ashore, but everyone is trying. In any case, you're tasked with making sure that your team is at least trying to row in the same general direction. Maybe you've even embraced "Telling Isn't Selling" as your new motto. So, now your sales reps are asking the client lots of questions and arriving at the perfect solution by virtue of their new consulting approach. Simple, isn't it?.
But how do you make sure it's really happening? You can't sit on every boat!
Regardless of the transformation initiative, what we hear and experience again and again is that uniformity and compliance remains a problem across the sales organization long after management embraces the need for change.
Yes, communication, training and continued education are still strategic cornerstones ensuring cultural change, but change management demands that a sales manager manage a host of variables and intangibles that often defy common metrics.
Accountability For Change Is Not Just For The Folks With Oars In Their Hands!
All too often, the metrics applied to this "sea change" remain grounded in standard CRM tools. Relationships, client data, records of calls, corresponding close ratios and revenue gain, etc. are all are good data points. They're also pretty good at helping you determine what happened after the fact.
- But how well do they measure real-time culture shift?
- And who is in charge of ensuring that it happens according to plan?
Two Keys to Success
The accountability for successful implementation of any sales culture change lies in the hands of the middle and first-line field sales management! Sales management must be held accountable for driving the transformation. No excuses. This is not a hands-off exercise.
Hold both your executive management and your field sales management accountable for sending consistent messages to the sales force. Even if you have to "manage up," nothing will sabotage a sales culture conversion quicker than incongruent messages!
So How Do You Do It?
Have you ever rolled out an initiative only to see it die on the vine? Remember the first time your company adopted a CRM application? Remember any issues with adoption? And yes, sometimes you have to be able to manage what can't be measured!
So what do you do? It all begins with a core message from executive management...then it's up to you - the sales manager. Consider leveraging some of the tools and activities you already have in place to help you:
Become a Virtual Coxswain!
Okay, the rowing analogy is probably all wet by now - sorry, couldn't resist - but the last point should be of particular interest to anyone embracing Sales 2.0. As a sales manager, you know that being with a sales rep in the field can be one of the most effective - and least efficient - ways of ensuring broad behavioral change.
Given the obvious limitations, it's time to consider how you can best leverage real-time "inter-activity" when it comes to coaching. Content management and online sales planning tools are just two of the applications out there that can help. "Sales enablement" solutions are in the emergent phase - do some checking and you'll discover that the old Web 2.0 is aggressively pushing the newer Sales 2.0.
Still not sure how to manage what can't be measured?
The next time one of your reps has a meeting with a key account and you can't attend - but you wish you could - try this:
Get the sales rep to send you a meeting plan well before the scheduled client interaction. Not just a presentation. Not just an agenda. Not just the client company information. But a well thought out pre-call plan. Make sure it includes:
- Meeting objective
- Questions to ask (remember it's "solution selling," right?)
- Anticipated questions and objections
- Planned responses or strategies to questions and objections
- Closing statement
- Fall-back plan if the client says "no!"
Do this and I'll bet you'll find some surprises. And maybe some coaching opportunities. At the very least, you get a good measure of how well the rep is negotiating your new sales culture initiative!
Giddyup!
Photo credit - Rower from Croatia
Credit and apologies go to Jim Kasper for my "leveraging" some of his insights and wisdom for this article. In his best-selling book, Creating the #1 Sales Force, Jim does a great job of detailing all the ins-and-outs of transforming sales cultures and creating dynamic sales teams. Jim is a frequent contributor to this blog and I look forward to him addressing this topic in much better fashion in the future.
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.