Sales Management Implements a Measurable Selling System

“A good plan is like a road map: it shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there.” – H. Stanley Judd

As you start the New Year, thought you’d be interested in this story.

Jon was shocked when he took over as the Director of Sales for a medical supply company. As might be expected, he found a significant difference in the close rate of his senior and junior salespeople. The seniors converted over 90% of their proposals to business, while the juniors did only 10%! After analyzing the differences, Jon found that the seniors had clear-cut, agreed upon ideas they used before proceeding to close. The Juniors went more on “gut feel.” After getting over the initial shock, Jon realized he had a golden opportunity to make a major impact on overall sales.

Jon simply implemented the same well defined, measurable selling system for the juniors as the one used by the seniors. This standardization of the selling system, based on Best Practices created by the senior sales group, made a dramatic improvement in the performance of the junior salespeople as well. As a matter of fact, it almost doubled the total sales for the company.

It sounds like a no-brainer that a well defined selling process should be applied across the spectrum of your sales effort. Unfortunately, many companies lack a coherent and formalized sales process system.

Don’t leave it up to the individual salesperson to develop his or her own system. Develop and use a Best Practices system.

Does your company use a uniform selling system? Has it been documented so that everyone on the sales team understands and adheres to it?

Tips for Profitably Restructuring-Sales Management Processes

The next place to look is at your Sales Management Processes.

Sales organizations that survive turbulent times will inevitably be the ones who have their sales management processes in place. People draw confidence from the structure created by solid and defined processes. Create your sales management processes around four key elements: accountability, motivation, recruiting, and coaching.

Accountability: Review your performance management system to ensure that goals and objectives are owned by each person on your sales team. Are your salespeople aligned with the company objectives and vision? Are there clear behavior and results metrics each sales person can quickly review to know if they are on track or not? What are the feedback loops? During these times, communication must be clear and constant.

Motivation: Motivation is actually a sales management process. This is a good time to re visit your compensation plans and to see if they are clearly aligned with your growth objectives. Discuss short-term and long-term career opportunities with each team member. Don’t forget to celebrate the individual successes of your people; by doing so you not only motivate your team, you also inspire them.

Recruiting: Use this time to upgrade your salespeople. Strengthen your force by employing the people you have questioned. Get rid of the dead wood. Be ready for the upturn and be first out of the blocks.

Coaching: If coaching is not a defined process in your business, you are losing significant revenues. Effective coaching can lift someone from mediocrity to superiority, enhancing strengths and overcoming weaknesses. Implement core coaching practices such as such as pre‐ching practices such as such as pre‐call planning, call debriefing, field coaching and deal coaching. In so doing, you’ll help ensure your team is maximizing every opportunity.

How strong are your sales management process? Are they strong enough to ensure that you’re recession proof?

Danita

Hire Salespeople with a recession-busting attitude

This is an eMail that I received this morning in response to a recent article posted in my monthly eLetter. Thought it was timely for us to consider:

This morning’s E-mail delivered a sales seminar message from consultant Danita Bye which triggered a set of thoughts I thought I’d share with my friends and business network this Thanksgiving week. Ms. Bye promotes a position to which I agree, and her comments about tough times needing a sales person/staff with a different attitude, is very true.

One of the results of being an “experienced” business person and sales executive as I am is that we have the benefit of history and can remember the oil embargo of the 70’s or the 21% interest rates to get a car loan or mortgage in the President Carter years. (I turned 60 yesterday, which I guess adds to my “reflective” mode this morning.) Those events happened when many reading this note or making today’s hiring decisions were still riding their Big Wheel tricycles and hugging their Chatty Cathy dolls. That is unfortunate.

Why is it that with 91% of us current on our mortgages, and with 94% having jobs, we are even thinking recession? It makes no sense unless you factor in that doom and gloom sells newspapers, and the message of how bad “things are” and voting for “change” gets politicians elected. (To put it in perspective, after eight years in office under FDR, unemployment was at 28%, and my parents generation kept re-electing him. Go figure.)

Pounded daily by bad times stories, no wonder the tendency is to stay home and put your money under the mattress, not hire that new sales manager or postpone that capital equipment purchase. Continually bombarded by negativism and the fiction becomes real in the minds of many, with little room left for what is actually true.

So my advice, such as it is, is:

Reject gloom! Hire now, and hire a sales force that shares that positive attitude. Now is exactly the WRONG time to cut back. No, sales will not simply come. But people want to feel positive and upbeat, and a business strategy that “gets it” and spreads a positive message is one that people want to buy from.

Dump the “he’s over qualified” thoughts from your hiring decision. Jobs are too precious today to job hop. Where after all might the candidate go except perhaps to your competition. This job market will allow you to hire some real talent at bargain rates. (Yah, that includes me.)

Count your blessings this holiday season and tell those who might benefit from bad news to go pound sand. FDR was as right today as he was then when he said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. So go sell something or hire somebody who can.

Happy Holidays

Rick Rappe’