Category: Sales Management

Business leaders’ best Practices for sales management, which are actively thinking about evolving their sales practices, should start by reviewing their compensation system, tools, and customer support methodologies to ensure they will not inhibit the required changes to sales procedures.

At the same time, they should review and, if necessary, change their hiring profiles to align with the new sales practices.

As such, any changes to sales practices should be a constant work in progress, given that they should be based on the customer and their continually changing needs and expectations.

1. Customers need to have consistently positive interactions with every contact point in your organization.
2. Your Sales Team must effectively communicate value messages relevant to customers’ needs.
3. Sales Management is effectively aligned to drive results by coaching improvement in sales skills, not just reporting outcomes.
4. Have in place a rigorous forecasting process that drives forecast accuracy.
5. Have in place processes or solutions that use call planning tools to prepare salespeople for customer interactions.
6. Ensure sales, marketing, and customer service effectively align with customers’ wants/needs.
7. Ensure your talent strategy ensures you have the people’s capability to achieve your business goals.
8. Ensure you continually assess WHY your top performers are successful and WHY you lose business.

Senior Management and Sales Management

Senior management and sales management are responsible for defining and aligning the go-to-market strategy with the overall business strategy.

This sales-led talent strategy (usually the responsibility of HR) and a strategy for using data as an asset (usually the responsibility of IT) should be realigned to Sales Management.

This realignment is necessary because data and people are the resources needed to fuel the strategy, and they can’t be left to chance or outsourced to other departments.

The achievement of this world-class alignment is reported to have seen a 20% plus increase in winning business, a 20% plus increase in achieving the forecast, and a 5% plus improvement in profit.

It was reported that this Dynamic Sales Coaching process formally defined, taught, reinforced, adopted, and tied directly to sales enablement activities reported win rates 32.1% higher.

I have proven this internationally reported theory with a 10% improvement in three different Microselling Skills of five salespeople, which resulted in a 30% increase in their sales, as can be seen in the graph below.

The salespeople’s names have been changed, but the results speak for themselves.

The Power of Positive Thinking can be the difference between reaching that magic target of 105% of the sales forecast and failing.

In my post two weeks ago, I talked about a colleague who met with their CEO and conceded it would be an excellent result if they could finish the year at 97% of the forecast.

In January, it looked like 104%, possibly 109%, was achievable, but then COVID-19 hit, and businesses all over the world saw a dramatic downturn in revenue.

In this post, I explained my colleague has an extremely strong self-belief system. What I didn’t tell you was how this person manages their salespeople and how they have been able to pass this Self Belief onto these people such that the Power of Positive Thinking changed their belief systems.

I have worked closely with this colleague over many years and have seen them grow confident and become an extremely effective Sales Manager.

This sales team finished their year on Wednesday, with 104% of forecast and 110% of last year.

The CEO and the Board of Directors have watched this sales team claw back the losses caused by COVID-19, edging past the 97% the CEO was prepared to accept and closing on the forecast target.

Power of Positive Thinking

Such is the Power of Positive Thinking and the belief instilled in this sales team by their Sales Manager that COVID-19 has become nothing more than a hiccup, a hurdle so beautifully navigated it warranted another post on the subject of Belief Systems.

There are times as a sales manager when you realise you can achieve what people never thought possible: change lives, create sales champions, and help those who report to you realise their dreams and ambitions.

This sales team, along with their Sales Manager, will be rewarded with an unexpected bonus in July that is not part of their remuneration package, such is the CEO’s commitment, as noted in my last, “Just let me know what you need to encourage your team to believe anything is possible, and you will get it”.

It is important to note that no bonus was asked for, nor was any incentive offered to the salespeople to achieve this result, but because their desire to reach the target has been deemed inspirational. They pushed for every dollar they could close because of their belief system and because they trusted the leadership of their sales manager.

The power of Positive Thinking delivered this unbelievable result during a pandemic that has caused distress to many businesses. What can it do for you?

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Sales management simplified is about getting exceptional results from your sales team. It’s about putting your foot on the gas pedal, about turbocharging both the effort and the outcome.

Most importantly, it’s about achieving a sustainable increase in performance and breaking through the ceiling of 105% of the forecast that eludes so many sales teams.

The art of selling has been written about, talked about, and recorded in countless seminars, audios, video presentations, and websites.

They all preach the same or similar versions of what it takes for a salesperson to become a champion salesperson.

Nothing new in all this material has not been tried before.

As consumers, we keep buying these materials because we pick up ideas we have seen, heard, or used before and forgotten.  These ideas resonate with us because we know them to be true.

A sales manager I knew defined the sales process for me some years ago. He believed selling was “the art of finding someone who wants and needs the product or service you are offering and making it as easy as possible for them to purchase it.”

Oversimplified, many would agree, but true.

Selling any product or service follows some fairly simple rules. The only differences are the product, industry, market, and the way different salespeople approach the opportunities presented to them.

Sales Management Simplified for the B2B market, it looks like the following.

1. Identification of potential prospects
2. Subjective qualification of the prospective customers’ needs
3. The objective qualification is that the prospective customer has the money, authority, and need
4. Closing the sale
5. Handling objections
6. Final close

According to current industry statistics, the average number of touchpoints to sell a product or service to any customer today is eight.

The average CRM or similar Sales/Marketing product will measure and report the following.

1. The date the prospective customer is first entered into the system
2. The date the prospective customer is subjectively qualified
3. The date and outcome of the first sales approach
4. The scheduled follow-up call date
5. The outcome of that meeting
6. The planned next follow-up call date
7. Identification of the prospective customer’s need and the value of the potential sale
8. Record the outcome of each meeting
9. The sale and its value
10. The loss of the sale and the reason why

While this list is nowhere near exhaustive and will vary between different software offerings, I am trying to make the point that these software products will never report the WHY.

Why did the prospective customer decide not to proceed, or were the sales lost or won?

These products are unable to tell you the WHY because they don’t attend meetings. They don’t see or hear what is said or happens; they just report outcomes and record what the salesperson enters into the CRM system.

The WHY is identifying what happened between the points I have listed above. You, as the Sales Manager, will never be able to improve the effectiveness of your salespeople unless you are present and able to identify the WHY.

So, if Sales Management Simplified and what I have written here resonates with you, the question I have to leave you with is.

WHY not find a 10% improvement in your salespeople’s Microselling Skills and achieve the 30% increase in sales I have proven can be achieved?

Then, you will have the skills and focus you need to coach the required improvement in technique.

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I was reminded this week by a colleague of the need to have strong Belief Systems, and when you do, anything is possible.

My colleague was so far ahead of their forecast in January this year that the CEO was singing their praises to anyone who would listen.

Then came COVID-19 with all of its restrictions, the sales team split into two rotating groups and a market that suddenly went quiet.

Over the next 3 months, that excellent lead slowly eroded.

In a catch-up meeting in May with my colleague, the CEO conceded it would be an excellent result if they could finish the year at 97% of forecast.

My colleague, who is an avid listener to motivational audio tapes, retorted that 101% would be nicer, to which the CEO responded, “You have to be realistic.”

My colleague responded without much thought, saying, “Realistic now or realistic July 1, ” and followed that up with a story about belief and support systems.

My colleague discussed an experiment in which two groups of people were placed in ice baths. One group was left on its own to see how long it could last. The second group was placed in the same ice temperature but provided with a group of encouragers.

I am sure you can guess which group lasted the longest.

The moral of the story is that a team that is supported and encouraged will always deliver a stronger result than a team that is not supported.

Belief Systems

Realistic July 1: Who knows what could happen between now and then, but accepting anything less than 100% is capitulation.

My colleague believes they can still achieve the forecast by July 1, and so does the sales team.

To the CEO’s credit, their response was, “Just let me know what you need to encourage your team to believe anything is possible, and you will get it.”

Now, this story about the ice baths was a motivational tape my colleague had listened to the day before. It was not until they reflected on where this instant response came from that they confirmed the value of doing something every day to help them believe anything is possible.

Why is it so important to continue to re-train our negative subconscious mind?

Because when you do, “Anything is Possible.”

As a footnote to this story, my colleague advised that with just six business days to go, they will be at 100% of the forecast at the close of business on Tuesday, June 30.

Why? Their belief system is strong; they have all the support they need, and when that is the case, “Anything is Possible.”

Next week, we will look at Sales Acceleration

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Assistant Sales Coaches, how to identify them and engage them in lifting the Micro Sales Skills of other sales team members.

When the Micro Selling Skills of the salespeople used in last week’s blog, Macro vs. Micro Skills, are compared, it is evident that each sales team member has different strengths.

The question is, can you use these salespeople to help improve others’ skills?  

Paul, for instance, had the highest Prospecting Skill conversion, while John had the highest Closing Skill conversion.

Neither is perfect, but it would make a fantastic difference if these skills were transferable to another sales team member.

Measuring each salesperson’s Micro Skill performance levels allows you to develop a coaching plan that delivers more substantial conversion ratios and identifies team members who can serve as assistant coaches.

Why use assistant coaches instead of doing the coaching work yourself? Your role is identifying and training your replacement while helping people grow and prosper.

Knowing each person’s aspirations and doing whatever you can equip them to realise those ambitions builds a stronger rapport and ensures maximum productivity from that individual.

Life has taught us not to trust everything we hear, read, or see but to question its accuracy and authenticity, so getting someone to share an approach that will identify sales skills that can be improved will always be more accepted than any other approach.

For these reasons, my approach to coaching Micro Skill improvement has been by posing questions like,

• Is there another approach we could have used to secure a better outcome?
• What could we have said differently to secure a better outcome?
• Is there another way we could have demonstrated the product to secure a better outcome?

Importantly, if the answer you receive to any of these questions is not perfect, stay on point by asking what else we could try until you are happy or happier with the response.

The objective is to get your salespeople to think about current sales opportunities and the approach (sales strategy) they plan to advance the sales process or close the business rather than go through the motions.

Every prospect and potential customer differs; our sales strategy should reflect that difference.

These or similar questions posed as part of a curbside conference after a sales call are ways in which we can help people take ownership of ideas and change the way they approach selling situations in the future.

Using this discovery in a sales meeting allows you to use key individuals as assistant coaches who reaffirm the need to change and improve the selling skills of all team members.

Why? Because I stopped telling them what they should do and started sharing success stories from their peers.

Next week, we will look at things from the CEO’s perspective at Belief Systems.

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