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.
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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!
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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.)
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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 Jim Kasper on Tue, Sep 22, 2009 @ 03:46 PM
Avoid "flavor of the month" terminology
The lack of uniformity of sales practice and commonality of sales process vocabulary will pose a barrier to sales organization effectiveness. Sales executives, managers, and representatives all come from various sales methodology trainings. Hence, most internal sales organization are a hodge podge of sales expressions. We highly recommend that you adopt and embed a common terminology for your professional sales team that is universally and quickly adopted and not proprietary to a specific "flavor of the month" methodology that will change as people come and go.
Legal, medical, financial, and educational occupations are prime examples of highly effective use of common professional language. In each of the aforementioned vocations words have the same meaning. We cannot make that claim in our profession.
Sales Process Glossary
Let us present the first "primer glossary" of universal sales process terminology. You are welcome to adopt these in your sales organization.
Sales Methodology: a specific sales philosophy utilized by your sales team to close/capture a sale. Embedded in each methodology are sales skills specific to that methodology's successful implementation. Examples: transactional, consultative, customer centric, strategic account, solution based, short cycle selling
Sales Cycle: Synonymous with sales process. The step-by-step procedure that your sales team must undertake to successfully conclude a sale from start to close. It is the process in which you practice your sales methodology. The following figure illustrates a generic sales cycle/process. Your sales cycle closely follows the buying cycle of your customers. It is called a sales "cycle" because, if you notice, it ends with a referral which starts a new cycle in the prospect stage.
Sales Cycle Stages: Each step within your sales cycle is referred to as a stage because a stage is a "platform or level" from which you will perform certain activities and achieve the next stage or level. Prospect is the first "stage" in the above sales cycle. Interview is the second "stage" and so on.
Sales Cycle Predominant Activities: Within each stage of your sales cycle are specific activities you must accomplish; however, you are not rewarded for conducting those activities; you are rewarded for achieving the next stage, which is your only objective. Example: Predominant activities in the "interview stage" of the above generic sales cycle may include pre-call planning, meeting agenda, and account history review.
Sales Cycle Dwell Time: Look again at the generic sales cycle example. You will notice little clocks between the sales cycle stages. Those clocks represent the amount of time expended to complete the next stage. In essence, the clocks measure the time your sales professionals "dwell" between stages. Most sales cycles have "standard or expected" dwell times between stages.
Sales Cycle Velocity: The total time it takes to complete one complete sales cycle (all of the stages). For consultative, complex sales cycles, this is usually measured in days, weeks, or months. It is easily calculated by adding all of the "dwell" times.
To download a free sales process glossary of terms for your sales team, click here.
Photo credit: shawn_econo
Posted by Todd Kasper on Thu, Sep 17, 2009 @ 07:38 AM
"In essence, Sales 2.0 combines customer-focused processes with Web 2.0 productivity technologies to enhance the art and science of selling while creating customer value."
--Gerhard Gschwandtner
Last week, I had the pleasure of joining 245 global sales leaders in Chicago for the last Sales 2.0 Conference of 2009. According to Gerhard Gschwandtner, Publisher of Selling Power, "Sales 2.0 is the chicken soup for the recessionary economy."
What follows are the three key takeaways you should know if you did not attend:
#1: It's a conversation economy
As information becomes easier for customers to get, the sales function's role becomes less about providing information and more about having conversations with customers. We all know that customers are changing the way that they prefer to buy, but sales organizations have not been as quick to change the way that they sell.
Customers (especially for complex sales) want to co-create with the sales professional solutions that meet their needs. This means that sales professionals need to ask more open-ended questions, do a better job of listening, and get the absolute most possible return out of each client interaction.
This also means that sales professionals need to have better leads, qualify opportunities earlier, and do a better job preparing for the time they actually get to spend with a customer. (An IDC study discussed at the conference revealed only 1 out of 6 sales professionals were "extremely prepared" for an initial meeting with a customer, and 57% were either NOT or only somewhat prepared!)
#2: Lack of Sales and Marketing cooperation on demand generation is inexcusable
The days of Sales and Marketing pointing the lead quality finger at each other need to be over. Companies need to begin to realize the efficiencies that come from sales and marketing alignment (especially in today's economic environment). Actually disqualifying leads is as important (if not more important) than qualifying them, due to the vast amount of time and resources that can be saved at later (and more time-intensive) stages of the sales cycle.
Kevin Hooper, VP, Technology Solutions Group at Hewlitt-Packard, spoke about giving the Marketing folks in his group at HP a share of the sales quota. What ensued was an instant alignment of interests between Sales and Marketing. Isn't this how it should be? (For more on this, read Mike Damphousse's Smashmouth Marketing interview with Mr. Hooper on sales and marketing alignment.)
One emerging trend to look for is the increasing use of predictive analytics to optimize sales and marketing resource allocation. This technology allows the right lead to be placed in front of the right sales rep at the right time. IncentAlign is doing some very interesting work in this space, especially around lead scoring and optimized lead routing.
#3: Social media enables better conversations
The good news is that if we are evolving into a conversation economy, social media is a major engine that allows sellers to engage customers in conversations at a much earlier point in the sales cycle (or to conduct better due diligence at later stages!).
According to Kevin Popovic of Ideahaus, the beauty of social media is these conversations can now be started with the customer where he/she is right now, and on his/her terms.
Pull strategies are proving to be significantly more effective than push strategies, and for more, please see Kevin Popovic's Social Networking in a Sales 2.0 World presentation.
Social media isn't just for teenagers and college students - it is a power toolbox that allows sales organizations to have better interactions with customers throughout the sales cycle. For more on the conference's social media panel, read Gerhard Gschwandtner's The Sales 2.0 Movement Accelerated in Chicago - Part II.
Photo credit: Sales 2.0 Conference
Posted by Tom Rothrock on Tue, Sep 08, 2009 @ 10:27 AM
Do They Measure Up?
In two of our earlier blogs we spoke about
identifying and
interviewing top performers for your sales team. We now want to expand that discussion toward how you can use assessments to strengthen your sales hiring process.
So, let's roll up our sleeves and get to work!
Your next move is to acquire the tools to enable you to do that. What you need is a tool that will measure the behavioral characteristics of your sales rep candidates and your existing top performers.
"Wait a minute," you say. "I understand the candidates, but why do I have to measure the characteristics of my top performers, too?"
Good question! That's how you establish the foundation for building your team of top performers. Once you've identified your top performers, your goal is to find more just like them. You want to duplicate your successes and avoid repeating costly hiring mistakes. By developing your "top performer benchmark" you'll be doing just that to measure future candidates.
That's where we'll return to the tool that measures behavioral characteristics mentioned above. Since the late 1980's, there's been a boom in the availability and the accuracy of behavioral assessments. That growth was enabled by the widespread use of the personal computer and Internet access, all of which have greatly reduced the time to complete, evaluate and generate assessment reports.
Today, there are hundreds of companies who can provide assessment services for you - a simple Google search using "assessments" will yield you a number of possibilities.
But that's where the hard work comes in. While there are a lot of firms who can provide assessments on your candidates, you must insist on the following from any firm you're considering:
Once you've located a reliable source for your assessment needs, you'll have the process in place for building your top performing team! If you have a HR department or specialist on staff, that’s a good place to start.
If I can aid you in your effort to incorporate assessments for your sales team hiring process, please do contact me at
precallpro.com.
Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet