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Macro and Micro Selling Skills. What are they, and what are the implications of improving micro skills?

Macro is the big-picture view of sales results. It’s a measure of progressive results. As an example, it’s the number of suspects that have been converted to prospects. The number provided with a quotation was then converted to a demonstration and closed. Macro is the conversion ratio or a measure of one person’s sales process compared to every other person in the sales team.

Macro measures results, not what happened in the sales process. Micro Skills includes but are not limited to the following.

• Selling skills
• Storytelling skills
• Oral communication skills
• Telephone skills
• Listening skills
• Written communications skills
• Prospecting skills
• Qualification skills
• Closing skills

Ranking these skills is subjective and can only be assessed by being present during any sales process where these skills have been used. While a subjective ranking may be arbitrary, it is, after all, better than no skill assessment.

Your experiences are no different from mine in the sense that you have been on a sales call where you cringed when you heard the response to an objection or, even worse, no response at all. So, placing a subjective ranking on these essential selling skills is possible.

In my book Sales Management—Coaching a Winning Sales Team, I have provided an example of an Excel Spreadsheet I have used to rank a salesperson’s skill level and place alongside it the level of improvement you believe is achievable. Taking it one step further, it’s possible to add a periodic assessment of what has been achieved.

The ratio of business closed is something everyone is interested in, and as a Sales Manager, you can place a lot of importance on improving that ratio. Any attempt to enhance ratios will affect the results, but those results will always fluctuate unless you find out the ‘WHY’.

Why ratios differ from salesperson to salesperson is simple it’s the difference in selling skills between each member of your sales team. The only way you will discover those differences is to spend time with your people while they are engaged in the selling process.

The Micro Selling Skills I use may not be perfectly suited to your industry or your sales situation, so make a list of your own that are applicable and get started.

I developed the following Excel spreadsheet to illustrate the different micro-skill levels of five hypothetical salespeople. I then applied a 5% increase in three selling skills for each person on this team.

This resulted in a 2% increase in closing ratios and an increase of two additional sales.

IMPORTANTLY, this increase in the Micro Selling Skills is a permanent change, and once confirmed, the coach can move on to another three Micro Skills.

Next week, we will look at building a team of Assistant Coaches

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In our last post, we established that coaches don’t play their coaches. As a consequence, any coach has a much better chance of successfully coaching a player if they can see firsthand how the player is performing and what can be improved upon.

From a Sales Management perspective, nothing is different. You still need to see and hear what the salesperson is doing and saying while you watch for the prospective customer’s response. Only then can you identify what Micro Selling Skills need to be focused on to achieve a better, more consistent result.

Establishing the planned objective/outcome before any sales call is the first step in riding a shotgun with any salesperson.

Use this information after the sales call to ask the salesperson if they could walk back into that call and do it all over, knowing what they know now; what would they do differently to secure a better outcome?

Given that no two sales will ever unfold in the same way, salespeople need to be able to adapt quickly if the process differs from what they were expecting. The salesperson can adapt to those changes that often make the difference between winning and losing business.

As a nonparticipating third person in any sales activity, you can see what will happen before it does. You don’t have to think about what answer you would give to any question or what you would do to get the sales call back on track; you observe the process unfolding before you and take mental notes about what could have been done differently.

Are you tempted to rescue one of your salespeople when something goes wrong? Do it once; the salesperson will let you do it for them every time. Your role is to coach and coaches don’t run onto the field and make tackles or score points, they coach!

The challenge when coaching salespeople is using your observations constructively. Lead the educational journey by encouraging the salesperson to tell you what they could have said rather than tell you what they should have done.

If you don’t get the answers you need, it just further highlights the selling skill development required for this individual. Lead with what if, and give them some part of the answer, but importantly, don’t overplay your hand because it can hurt the person’s confidence.

Coaches don’t play; they coach, and in the coming posts, I will share with you techniques that will help you not only make your salespeople more successful but also help them realise their true potential.

 Next week, we will start building a Micro Skills Development Program

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The term Sales Management is an oxymoron. No one can manage sales; they either happen or they don’t.

Sales Management is all about managing salespeople and finding ways to help them become more successful.

The challenge is that unless you know the point where any sale was lost, stalled, or put at risk, you will never know how to coach improvement.

Rugby League coaches in Australia measure on-field performance, including tackles made, missed tackles, meters gained, meters gained post-contact, and more.

Without actually seeing the missed tackle and knowing why it was missed, the defensive coach cannot help that player reduce the number of missed tackles in their game.

Poor positional play always puts stress on any defensive team. It allows the attacking team to run through gaps in the defensive line, causing other players to move into assists, creating more pressure on the defensive.

Coaching better positional play techniques and ensuring the skill is retained are the preferred coaching options rather than allowing poor technique to continue.

Either way, how can any coach do their job effectively without seeing the play and determining what the player needs to improve?

Coaching a salesperson is no different. You can be a sideline coach motivating your team, a coaching box coach giving half-time analysis and motivation, or you can be the water boy who is on the field – not to offer water but to coach, motivate, carry instructions from the coach and by the way offer water to the players.

Do you think for one minute that if the coach were allowed onto the field, the water boy would still have a job? How much more effective would a coach be if they were allowed onto the field and could direct, motivate, and muster their players?

Technique

It all boils down to technique. As a salesperson, what I say, what I do, and how I do it are some of the Micro Skills I use every day. The only way to achieve sustainable long-term improvements in any salesperson’s capacity to deliver sales forecasts is to observe their individual Micro Skills where and when they happen.

From this, you need to develop a coaching plan to improve the skills your observation identifies as needing improvement. Concentrate on only three skills at a time and confirm by further observations that these skills have improved and are being used.

In one of my future newsletters, I will share the results of just a 5% improvement in three different Micro Skills of a five-person sales team. Remember, these results have a sustainable long-term effect on a person’s ability to deliver sales forecasts.

The term Sales Management is an oxymoron. They are conflicting terms, just the same as Bitter Sweet.

Next week, we will jump into discovering an individual’s selling level Micro Skill Assessment

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Sales Management is the Edge you need.

Managing people was perhaps the most demanding aspect of my job as a Sales Manager. However, it was a poor second to the need to be one step ahead of them when it came to them respecting my knowledge and ability to coach improvement in their selling skills.

I found some of the answers in the books and tapes I purchased; however, the respect I gained from my sales team and the skills I developed over time came from many errors on my part and a desire to be the best sales manager possible.

When you consider there is no way to “Manage Sales” unless, of course, you are responsible for closing the business yourself, the challenge is to manage the resources that will achieve that sales forecast.

Assuming you have CRM and one of the Business Intelligence software solutions available, you have access to the performance characteristics of each team member. While these tools have a purpose, they are like reading the scorecard after finishing the game.

Statistics measure what happened; observations let you understand why it happened, and no CRM or Business Intelligence system will provide that perspective.

If you want to make a difference as a Sales Manager (Coach), you need to spend time with your salespeople while they are engaged in all aspects of selling your product or service. Time spent here is pure gold as a coach, given you see firsthand the selling process unfold before your eyes.

Fine-tuning a salesperson’s selling, storytelling, oral communication, telephone, listening, written communications and prospecting skills, to mention but a few, can only be achieved when you spend time in the company of the people who deliver the results.

You cannot fix what is broken until you know it is broken. That means you must be present when there is a breakdown in the first place—before you learn how to coach the salesperson on securing the required outcome.

Sales Management is the Edge you need.

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The Primary Objective of any Sales Manager is to achieve and consistently exceed sales forecasts. To accomplish this, you need to know the Micro Selling Skills level of every salesperson in your team and how Coaching a Winning Sales Team works to improve these skills.

Sales Managers seem to have become reliant on software that measures activity, performance, and the conversion ratios of each of their salespeople. While these tools are essential in helping Sales Managers manage their people and record the outcome, they do not record or measure the play-by-play actions that win or lose business.

The software cannot identify the twists and turns of every sales process; it just measures outcomes. So, if you want to win more business than ever, spend time watching the game rather than measuring the game stats and final score via your CRM systems.

Fine-tuning a salesperson’s selling skills, storytelling, oral communication skills, telephone skills, listening skills, written communications skills, and prospecting skills, to mention but a few, can only be achieved when the Sales Manager spends 80% of their working hours in the company of the people who report to them.

A good sales manager will have an action plan for coaching a winning sales team, as well as the following:

1. Please get to know the Microselling Skills, strengths, and weaknesses of each person on their sales team.
2. Have a strong opinion about what training is needed for each salesperson in their team.
3. Implement a Micro Selling Skills Performance Coaching and Development Plan for each team member.
4. Know how to help each salesperson win more business.
5. Know the ambitions and goals of each team member.
6. Have a coaching plan that helps team members realise their ambitions and goals.

Sales Managers cannot be present when every sales opportunity is identified, qualified, demonstrated, or closed, and so they cannot observe the sales process during each of these phases, which either wins the business or causes it to be lost.

By spending 80% of their time with their salespeople in face-to-face calls, phone calls to suspects/prospects/customers, and any other sales engagement process, you will understand why conversion ratios differ from salesperson to salesperson.

Performance Coaching identifies the macro skills of each salesperson in your team and which skills need to be polished.

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