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November 25, 2010
 Who Moved My Seven Effective Good to Great Cheese Habits?
By Mark Faust
Every week a new book hits the shelves touting the “new” idea in management and “new” wisdom for business. Regarding the processes of business, human nature and true wisdom, nothing is new under the sun, just as that phrase dates back to Solomon.
 Instead of looking to faddish books start looking to your sales teams. Stop looking to faddish books and start looking to your sales teams.
True innovation revolves around where your focus lies, how unique your solutions to customers are, and how you define, promote and deliver the value you have to offer.
One of the best places to begin your accelerated growth fueled by innovation efforts is by listing and prioritizing your top constraints. You can begin by asking questions like:
1. Where are our greatest untapped sales growth potentials, either existing or specific new customers or both?
2. What do we need to improve to make more sales?
3. What are the top risk factors existing in our business in need of improvement?
…that said one of the simplest ways to ask your team about innovation opportunities is to just ask this one simple question:
• What are this company’s biggest problems that hinder our growth or salesforce?
Great question, but be ready for the answers. Oftentimes the top constraints to growing a business lie in its culture, talent management and talent engagement.
Talent engagement represents the extent to which the workforce identifies with the company, is committed to it and provides discretionary effort so that it can be successful. Engagement is a key leading indicator for high performance workplaces, improved employee productivity and subsequent turnover.
Often while top management is looking out the window into the marketplace to find the levers of growth, the linchpin to growth may be inside the heart of the organization, your people.
Innovation efforts should be holistic and involve improvements in how you serve your internal customer as much as how you might improve your products and services to your external customer.
If you are committed to growing the company through accelerating your efforts in innovation you must focus on the people within your company and work on ways to get and keep more internal customers. And no one has more impact on the talent and employee engagement of a company than the top echelon leader. As long as he or she is humble, innovation can begin. “Humility is the sire of all virtue” especially creativity.
An often ignored area frequently in need of improvement is the sales teams culture. Often a company culture is set by the attitudes and character of the top leader. The strength of a leader’s character can sometimes be the flip side of their weaknesses. One who is patient and a great listener may be slow to make a decision and hard charging visionaries can often be poor listeners and not focused on the people. These weaknesses tend to trickle down into the behaviors of the teams and ultimately build into the culture weaknesses that can become abrasive to both customer and employees.
When the answers to the “biggest problems” question are things like “no one around here appreciates…” or “the company tends to tolerate (fill in a negative term)” then you know you have to work on improving culture.
Two steps to improving culture are:
1. Ask your sales teams for ideas around, “What would make this company a better work place?” or “What would make your job more fun, or you more excited about coming to work?”
2. Put in place a character recognition program where you recognize people for good character qualities.
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November 18, 2010
By Mark Faust
Many companies have an old set of value statements, written by a founder or previous management teams. These values might hang on the wall or be passed into collateral. Whether these speak of the priorities of customers and service, or of treating others with respect, there are several steps any management team can take to make this essential element of your strategy fuel to accelerating growth.
Do you have conflict within your salesforce and/or is growth not as fast as it could be? What is the cost of conflict on productivity and effectiveness?
Most conflict within teams or a salesforce can be traced back to a lack of understanding or enforcement around company values. To have values work as a tool for improving teamwork and reducing conflict, having your team answer two questions each year in an all hands on deck exercise can help to reinforce the desired attitudes and actions.
These two questions are: 1. How do you and customers want to be treated in the workplace? And 2. How will we deal with it when someone doesn’t live up to these values?
Since people tend to support that which they help to create, everyone should have input into these answers.
To supercharge the values in an organization and transform them into strategic growth oriented values, also ask sales teams:
“How would we need to:
• conduct our work,
• work with each other and customers
and what kind of environment do we need to foster
• in our company,
• in our work
• and in our relationships
in order to absolutely maximize joy in the workplace as well as the growth rate, profitability and stability of this company?”
 Use these team oriented strategies to accelerate growth Have every sales associate openly discuss the top traits, qualities, ways, habits, environments, attitudes…i.e., values, that we need to live and work by, and list this out in a long list that will usually have several dozen potential values.
Then ask each individual to privately list out the top six values that they feel are the highest priority values that will most accelerate growth and improve satisfaction, happiness and profitability in the workplace. Then have sales associates team up in twos and agree on a top six together, then repeat the same process in teams of four, then eight etc. until the entire team has come up with what they have prioritized and agreed to what can then be a list of the top six to ten values that will create the optimum environment.
Conduct a similar facilitation around the question, “How will we deal with it when one of us doesn’t live up to our value statements?” the much tougher, but more important question, and yet key to ensuring that the values become reality.
The team or committee could work on also building out working definitions of each value, and perhaps examples. The final word-smithed document can be printed on a poster and ceremoniously signed by the entire team.
Leadership should regularly and publically recognize employees being good examples of walking out the values.
Most teambuilding exercises like ropes courses and falling backwards into your co-workers arms are a waste of time compared to having the team create growth oriented values and strategic growth objectives that will work to accelerate growth as these exercises help to Create Emotional Ownership, the C.E.O. of your growth oriented culture. I’ve seen this process double the size of companies while making it a much happier workplace. Are you ready to grow?
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November 11, 2010
By Mark Faust
One of the best shows on TV is Undercover Boss. Undercover Boss is a metaphor for life, business and God.
Getting choked up watching this show is as predictable as its format which guarantees laughs, tears and cheers all in a prescribed order.
The Process - In ways, every episode is the same, and yet each show is unique. The boss commits to going undercover to work in various jobs throughout the company for a week. Presenting the reason for the video camera shadowing him, as being part of some documentary. The employees have no idea who they are dealing with.
 Improve your Salesforce by Becoming an Undercover Boss Imperfect Gods – Management is like God, a God that can humble himself to walk in his salesforce’s shoes and in the end can deliver sales teams from pain and woes or remain insulated from the sales teams’ realities and become like a demonic guardian of pain and fear.
Trust – At the onset, the boss confides to his inner circle about the mission he is about to embark on. He assumes their trust and asks for final input before donning the armor of disguise. Like kings who led charges in medieval wars these bosses head straight to the front lines of the battle.
Humility – Management is part God, part hero, only to the extent of their humility. In every show, leaders walk in the same dirt and danger as their front line best, and are shocked at the sacrifice, commitment and love their employees have for their jobs, customers and teams. On most shows, we see grown men break down in tears at night as they retreat to their Motel 8 room as they realize how their insensitivity has allowed their best people to experience unnecessary pain and strife.
America’s Best Heroes Are CEOs – While it has become cachet to put the American businessman and especially management as the most iniquitous enemy of the people, the fact is many CEOs are actually the greatest heroes of our time…or at least have the potential to be.
The Final Reunion– Like going to heaven, the employees who endure training the Undercover Boss on the rigors of their job, and other team members are brought together to see video clips of themselves saying things like “he just doesn’t have it in him for this kind of job” or “this guy will never make it here.” But in the utmost of humility and compassion the boss brings innovative solutions and opportunity to each of the participants.
What You Can Do – Despite setting your Tivo for Sunday night on CBS, the very same principles that entertain us the most in this show are the solutions to growing your business. Using a third party to conduct in-depth interviews with customers and employees as well as being involved in such listening efforts is just the beginning to implementing an ongoing effort of improved communication and continuous innovation.
If you’re willing to listen to the salesforce you serve, there will be an abundance of ideas that will deliver your company to a whole new level. So when it comes to your company’s growth and its people will you be a paladin or a pain?
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November 10, 2010
 Dublin Entrepreneurial Center
Increase You Sales Performance Workshop Series
How to Train & Coach Your Way to a Winning Sales Culture
by
Ray & Barney Group and Pipeline Coach
Another great session with the focus on Training and Coaching where Ray & Barney Group combined presentation efforts with Pipeline Coach donating both their time to facilitate the program and outlining the Systems, Skills, and Talent necessary to have a chance to compete in marketplace.
James Rores covered how Sales Culture is the bridge that connects strategy to performance. Your people walk the bridge and you can make culture a tangible component of change by having the proper focus. The way to get there is to:
- Measure so you can manage.
- Track so you can train.
- Confirm so you can coach.
 Measuring Sales Performance Measure Results:
When we measure the little things we have a greater opportunity to impact performance – creating a more accurate, common language shared among sales leaders, managers, and producers.
Rye D’Orazio discusses assessing your talent to know where to start is a key component of measurement looking first at Behavioral Traits: Nature of Reaction, Extraversion, Originality, Agreeableness and Channeling Effort. Rye went on to discuss the importance to competencies and knowing which ones your sales team need. James added the importance of knowing the ease of changing competencies from relatively Easy to Change, Harder, but Doable to Very difficult to Change.
Train to Control:
James also talked about when we know what to measure and how to communicate what we learn that best practices and controls emerge. James said the “Tracking (documenting) best practices and controls creates value and makes value transferable. We are able to more quickly ramp-up new team members and drive individual performance”. Areas to look at are:
- What and How we do:
Demand Generation, forecast …
- What and How we think:
Risk taking, stress management …
Coach to Accountability:
The last topic covered was coaching. After we understand the many components of a successful outcome and the best practices that make success possible, we must partner in their execution. Accountability creates the connective tissue (mortar) that holds our people to the management and training systems developed to ensure their success.
- Personal Habits:
Time management, prioritization …
- Personal Behaviors:
Perceptions …
The highlight of the session by far as indicated by the attendees was the section on the practical emails in contacting and communicating to prospects. Great examples were provided on ways to contact your top prospects and get a response. The email samples centered around getting your prospects Attention, creating Interest and Desire and offering an Action to take.
Check out this PDF for more information about this session!
We hope you can join us at the next session on SALES SYSTEMS & MANAGEMENT: How to make process and technology work within your sales team.
Thursday, December 2, 2010 7:30am–9:30am at the DEC!
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November 4, 2010
By Mark Faust
Have a clear central growth goal?
• 66% of the companies we surveyed don’t have one, but wish they did.
• Of the companies that had one, only 32% regularly communicated their progress.
• Of the companies that had one, only 28% had a realistically challenging one.
• Only 14% of companies are creatively engaging their customer to accelerate their progress toward it.
• 100% were certain they could exceed their current performance!
What are we talking about? A central growth objective that is both a stretch beyond your current growth trajectory and yet realistically challenging.
 What is your Central Growth Goal? If “all the stars were to align” and your sales teams implemented significant improvements and innovations, what is the incremental growth you envision your sales teams could experience?
We recently sent a survey to hundreds of leaders of companies and found that, despite agreement from the respondents that the following were key best practices in accelerating growth, the vast majority of organizations failed to successfully implement any of the following guidelines. How does your company stack up?
1. Do you have a specific central growth goal for your salesforce that is understood by everyone on your sales teams?
2. Does your salesforce realistically believe in and are they challenged by your Central Growth Goal?
3. Does your Central Growth Objective excite, inspire, and emotionally charge your sales teams; does it exhort your sales teams into action, or is it just another directive?
4. Are your metrics charted, graphed and visually fed back in shorter (monthly or more frequently) periods of time, to all of your salesforce?
5. Is an objective third party challenging you and the sales team to raise the bar, dispelling skepticism of aggressive growth, and insuring open communication?
6. Is your Central Growth Goal built not top down, but by consensus, with a representative set of inputs from your sales teams that is more objective?
7. Is a representation of your customer base invited to give insights toward improvement and are customers’ challenges invited through one on one open dialogue, ideally with a third party instead of quantitative surveying tactics?
Despite excellent past history, almost every company has made significant improvements when they challenged themselves to raise the bar. It’s not magic, but rather a simple process of management formulated over 60 years ago that just isn’t fully implemented very often and isn’t quite as effective unless a third party is involved in facilitating, coaching, challenging and holding accountable those who are the stewards of growth.
If your “strategic plan” doesn’t come as close as you want in regards to having each of the above seven points executed, you probably have a partial growth plan instead of a fully fleshed and aggressive one.
If you are a steward of growth and think the bar can be raised, pass out the survey above. Challenge your leadership to raise the bar and make this the fastest growing time in your company’s history, just as many other companies are experiencing.
Imagine what January, 2011 might be like if you accomplished your stretch vision!
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October 28, 2010
By Mark Faust
It is effective management and not charismatic leadership that builds sustainable competitive advantage, and fosters the process of innovation. Now, more than ever, better management is needed to grow companies and organizations.
Charismatic leadership is a dangerous fad, and “leadership charisma” is not a sustainable basis for successfully building a company or managing any type of organization, salesforce, team or even a nation.
At the heart of many floundering organizations and teams is the struggle between charismatic leadership versus an effective management process. Where is your company focus?
When a salesforce surrenders to a charismatic leader; throws hope behind an individual and not process, charisma and not logic, speeches and not dialogue, then we are surrendering our own responsibilities, and thus our own freedoms.
 Leadership What does this mean to you as director over a salesforce or team in a business? Focus less on your style and desire to inspire or motivate your salesforce with emotive effort and focus more on the process of management, continuous improvement, systematic innovation, logic, and focus on the customer. As a result you will build sales, profits, and the quality of your team.
If you are an owner, president or top manager, you must focus on effective management not leadership. Here are the operative meanings of these two words:
• Management – maximizing the strengths of resources around you (human and otherwise) while minimizing the impact of the weaknesses in order to reach agreed upon objectives.
• Leadership – motivating groups or individuals to follow your direction, vision or desires bya variety of possible means (charisma, persuasiveness or power)
Hitler, Mussolini and Mao were powerful leaders, but poor managers who followed few of the essential elements of effective management. They led by threats rather than mutual dialogue. Perhaps, you could think of a few more modern “leaders” currently in power around the world. Are they good managers though? Truman on the other hand, was not known to be a good leader, but he is recorded as a president who was one of the best “managers” in the presidency, and was highly effective, despite some mistakes politically he may have made.
Washington and Lincoln were not known for their charisma as much as they were known for earning and giving respect. They didn’t dictate as presidents, they managed.
By this time you may be thinking, “This is just semantics.” No, this is a battle to shift the focus in business from too much weight being put on relationship and charisma to more emphasis on the process of value creation, systemic innovation, logic and focus on the customer. For example, great managers are good facilitators who help their team continuously clarify and refine objectives and the measures of success.
Are you helping your salesforce or teams continuously refine their individual and organizational objectives?
Here are steps you can take to become a better manager and help your salesforce or organization eschew the lure of charismatic leadership.
1. Work with the team to clarify goals…quarterly not annually.
2. Take responsibility. Don’t feel threatened by ambitious subordinates, but celebrate their triumphs with them. Don’t point blame on others. Understand that responsibility ultimately lies with you (be the anti-Donald Trump).
3. Earn trust by being consistent, managing expectations, clarifying and reinforcing clear values that your organization believes in and helps build.
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October 21, 2010
By Mark Faust
On the wall of an employer hung the sign, “In business as in life it’s all about three things: 1. Relationships 2. Relationships 3. Relationships.”
While recently participating in a conference of sales VP’s, we heard from researchers and panels of successful sales leaders who shared some contrarian insights. University professors Dr. Chris Plouffe and Dr. Arun Sharma shared a variety of insights from their extensive research on selling and sales effectiveness.
One discovery was that younger salesforces tend to outperform older salesforces. Now this did not mean that a sales team of twenty somethings will consistently outsell those with ten or twenty years more experience, rather sales teams with average ages lower than companies very similar to them consistently had better results. They mentioned the younger salesforce performance factor because it related to another more important finding; effective relationship sellers are significantly out sold by those that focus their selling on added value.
In fact, sales reps that are not as well liked as others on a team are often significantly outselling reps who rate very high on rapport and relationship because they sell value well.
 Relationship vs. Value Selling This didn’t mean that relationships were not important; rather, what these new studies are showing is that in our new economy, selling value is more important than ever, and selling value is getting better results.
This has brought to mind the many experiences of our smaller agricultural company clients whose most experienced reps have been losing business to “young punks” from the larger multinationals. While our clients weren’t often certain why they lost the business, and the sales reps were pointing to that “special deal” or “special pricing” as the reason for the lost business, our research finds otherwise.
As is customary in our work, we interview champion customers, customers with potential for significant growth, and lost customers. The customers lost to the large multinationals do occasionally mention certain “deals” they may have received or some attractive pricing offer, but more often than not, they speak in terms of how the package offer is a better overall value and how they feel and hope that by going with the new supplier they are going to make more money. While some will sometimes point that the “more money” is coming from a lower price, in the same breath those lost customers are asserting that the quality, effectiveness and result from the product and service is basically the same, but most lost customers believe that there will be an increase in performance/value/profits/net return. They were consistently sold by the “young punk” on value, not relationship.
So what can you do to insure that all of your team is improving their focus on value?
The Value Quota – Metrics for Success
In the dashboards and metrics that we help sales management build to better manage their team; we often suggest a measurement, coaching around and inspection of Value Clarification. Rather than starting the focus on “how much do you think you can sell customer X?” start the focus on “how much added value do you think you could bring to customer X and why?”
How do you think your customers wish you would sell them? Wouldn’t they prefer that you created a list of not just the biggest customers, but a list of those whom you thought would have the most financial gain from your solution? Suppose target lists were managed not on the supplier’s benefit and profit, but on the customer’s. Your sales will go up; we know it, because we see it all the time.
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October 17, 2010
 Dublin Entrepreneurial Center
Increase Your Sales Performance Workshop Series
Ray & Barney Group and Pipeline Coach
“The first indication of an improved overall economy will be driven by the Sales groups in Organizations expanding on their Sales Forces because they have to.” Now that’s a quote that could be made by most companies in this current environment. The real catch is that the companies who aren’t building for this environment internally…..and right now…..are going to be the ones left in the dust.
An early morning meeting took place last week at the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center entitled “Learn How To Hire Top Sales Talent: The First of a Three-Part Series on Boosting Sales Performance in 2011.”
Don’t worry so much if you may have missed the first one, because you can redeem yourself by participating in one or both of the other two more scheduled before the end of the year. So read on and then put them into your calendar now. They’re free events too!
Ray & Barney Group combined presentation efforts with Pipeline Coach donating both their time to facilitate the program and outlining the Systems, Skills, and Talent necessary to have a chance to compete in this new “Post-Recessionary” marketplace. Some of the rules have changed over these last couple of years and the stakes have been raised significantly as to the importance of making not just good, but great hires in your Sales Forces.
Rye D’Orazio, Partner, for the Ray & Barney Group kicked off the meeting by stressing the importance of taking the time to provide assessment tools for managing Talent in an organization minimizing the chances of an expensive mis-hire. Providing realistic examples of practical decision making processes, this portion of the presentation drew plenty of questions from those in attendance, prompting Rye to show not only another Partners’ sample of Talent Assessment Plans, but an array of Ray & Barney Best Practices developed over several years and designed for just this purpose.
James Rores, Founder of Pipeline Coach, stressed the need for tending to a business Culture not only in the field of Sales Management, but overlapping Culture with the importance of Assessing good talent and then Onboarding the new employees into the company in a manner that makes the most sense for the individual and the organization.
James originally comes from a 3rd generation family Hospitality Business and has naturally been drawn to dealing with Sales Organizations as a career choice. I know from talking to him that his expertise is in helping his client companies make informed, yet progressive decisions in how they manage their business processes. James is always dealing at a level of “Coaching” clients towards Predictability and Repeatable Processes. This fundamental belief leads to closing the gaps between perception and reality for most businesses. He’s excellent at practical planning and grinding through to laying out a practical blueprint for companies whether they are a $1 billion Sales Force or a Privately-held, closely managed Entrepreneurial small to mid-size business.
Rye D’Orazio also originally came from a 3rd generation family business before heading down the path of building a successful IT Business. After selling this company he has worked for the past 10+ years studying business Life Cycles, trends in the business environment, and working with individuals and companies who are trying to build a better life for themselves in gaining a better understanding of Work-life balance.
Both chemistries complemented each other well by sharing ideas and real-life samples of specific events triggering outcomes that changed the courses for customer accounts. You could easily see how the synergy of the two people and companies in Ray & Barney and Pipeline Coach made for a good match for this session. You could see by their going back and forth within each others’ work how they both share the Passion and the Knowledge of these changing dynamics. It was a learning experience.
All in all it was certainly worth the time and effort to get going just a little earlier than usual and head over to the DEC. I am told that the next 2 events promise to be even more interactive with the attending organizations and individuals and ideas on expanding topics and specific questions are more than welcome before and during the event.
Most everyone in the room indicated on following up with them that they would be attending the rest of the series, which should be a vote of confidence that this event is continuing to head in the right direction.
So now you can put it on your calendar.
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The 2 remaining events in the Series will also take place at the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center, 7003 Post Road, Dublin, Ohio 43017.
| SKILLS: How to use training and coaching to cultivate a winning sales culture
Thursday, November 4, 2010 7:30am–9:30am
SALES SYSTEMS & MANAGEMENT: How to make process and technology work within your sales team
Thursday, December 2, 2010 7:30am–9:30am |
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September 21, 2010
By Mark Faust
Selling is one of the most emotionally draining efforts in business. One’s self esteem is put to the test with each challenge, objection and rejection. But unlike most competition, sports, or even war, sales is usually a fight that one person is making on their own. Worse yet, if one fails in a sales call or series of efforts, they not only face the initial rejection, but the cross examination and second guessing from management and their peers.
So given the pressures and solo nature of sales is there anything that can be done to ameliorate the potential for self doubt, emotional downturns and static sales strategies?
There is a strategy that many of the best companies strategically employ to foster continuous improvement in selling efforts, cross training, improved esprit de corps and for enhanced credibility; team sales calls. Unlike the shadowing of a sales manager with their sales rep, team sales calls of two sales reps have a different dynamic. There are times where it is important to have management shadow sales reps, but this strategy is different.
 Team Sales Calls What we have found with client after client is that when occasional team sales calls are scheduled between peers in the field there are several benefits; increased productivity, exchange of selling strategies and ideas, improved closing ratios and improved morale.
We find that tying current top objectives to the purpose of the team sales calls can often accelerate progress toward reaching those objectives. Whether it’s training and skills improvement, productivity improvement or just improving sales revenues, incorporating team sales calls can often help a company to reach its sales development goals faster. Here are a few applications of the concept:
Peer to Peer Evaluations & Training – Sales reps of all experience levels have areas that they could improve. Having your sales team create a list of areas that they would like to improve organizationally and in their own selling execution is a great start to beginning peer to peer evaluation and training. Create a check list and/or ratings sheet of areas that need to be evaluated. Alternate reps evaluating each other on team sales calls as well as require recommendations for improvement. Professionals that evaluate others on their performance end up learning much for themselves. Best of all the recommendations tend to be more readily received because they’re from a peer and not “just management who doesn’t really know what it’s like out there right now anyway.”
Sales Blitzes – To address productivity that is lower than the potential or to penetrate a territory quickly that is new or has been somewhat ignored, it can be quite effective to get “all hands on deck”. Put as many people into this target territory to make joint sales calls and see as many of the prospects and customers as possible. The teaming tends to ensure that everyone is productive and making as many calls as possible. The result is proof and confidence that a much greater number of calls can be made. Also, it can be a bit of a shock treatment for the market/prospects who experience your company coming out in full force and thus making quite a powerful impression.
King Calls – Involving presidents, GM’s and owners on calls can be miraculous at improving credibility, shortening sales cycles and bringing improvements to the sales efforts. Customers and reps appreciate the respect that is shown by occasionally having the top echelon out in the field. Many of the best CEOs make this a regular practice.
Determine where you could make team sales calls and watch sales improve!
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August 18, 2010
By Rye D’Orazio rdorazio@rayandbarney.com
As Organizations focused on Sales, it’s important that we take time to assess ourselves internally. Are we doing the right things? Focusing on the activities that are important? Are we structured in such a way as to motivate and reward our teams? Often the best way to answer these and other important questions, is to view ourselves from the outside looking in. What better eyes to use than those of new Sales recruits?
Geoffrey James in his blog, “Geoffrey James Questions to Answer” provided a comprehensive list of interview questions for sales professionals. This list of 21 questions, focusing on 5 central Sales areas, can aid all Sales Professionals looking to assess potential employers as well as act as a starting point for employers looking to assess their Sales organization. Here is James’ list:
COMPENSATION:
- What is the base pay, commissions and perks?
- How soon are commissions paid after deals close?
- Is there a ramp period?
- How are commissions handled during that ramp-up period?
SALES PROCESS:
- What is the sales process for this company?
- How is the sales process documented?
- What sales process training will be provided, when and from whom?
- What product knowledge training will I receive, when and from whom?
- What is the typical sales cycle and how long does it take?
SALES TOOLS:
- What sales tools will be provided?
- What marketing materials will be provided?
- What sales technology is available?
- Does the company provide computers and/or cell phones?
OPPORTUNITY DEVELOPMENT:
- How are prospects identified?
- What percentage of your sales comes from customer referrals?
- What role does marketing play in lead generation?
- When a customer is dissatisfied, how is that handled?
MANAGEMENT STYLE:
- What are your expectations of your sales people?
- How and when do you communicate with your sales people regarding their performance?
- What kind of coaching can sales people expect from management?
- How frequent are sales meetings and what happens at them?
These are great questions to act as a “gut check” for Sales Leaders. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves what our sales culture is all about in order to make the right decisions moving forward. What about the CEO/President/company leader, could they better lead and manage if they had this perspective on their sales organization too? To best lead and manage your sales leader with confidence you, as the company leader, need to have the knowledge of how your company’s sales organization operates. “Knowledge is power to control where you want to lead” James Rores Pipelinecoach.com founder says.
Here are a few additional questions to help you focus your knowledge of sales in your internal assessment:
COMPENSATION:
- What is the sales team incented to do and does the incentive align with what we want the sales people to do?
SALES PROCESS:
- How well are your Sales, Marketing and Product/Service Packaging aligned?
- Do these 3 groups understand their roles in the sales process?
SALES TOOLS:
- How well is the Sales team in line with the sales process?
- How do the sales reps consider the tools they use; for reporting to management or a valued part of the sales process that helps them perform better?
OPPORTUNITY DEVELOPMENT:
- What type of sales associates make-up of the sales team and what are their roles? Account Management, Hunter and Opportunity Lead Generator, Solution development, etc.
MANAGEMENT STYLE:
- Is it a one way is the only way? Is it results oriented focused and not style focused?
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Pipeline Coach provides the following simple scorecard for sales assessments, the knowledge that gives visibility to lead:
How well does your sales organization consistently
… 1. Needs Improvement 2. Meets Expectations 3. Exceeds Expectations
Document and follow a well-defined sales process? 1 2 3
Balance each step in the sales process? (e.g. opportunity generation,lead incubation, buy-cycle management, solution development, proposal writing, negotiation, closing, and account management 1 2 3
Collect and report accurate pipeline metrics? 1 2 3
Collaborate and share best practices? 1 2 3
Compensate producers consistent with overall business goals? 1 2 3
Meet forecast sales goals? (e.g. what will close, when, for how much) 1 2 3
Properly qualify and prioritize opportunities? 1 2 3
Avoid price as an objection? 1 2 3
Effectively cross-sell and up-sell? 1 2 3
Add new clients? 1 2 3
Schedule and run effective internal sales meetings? 1 2 3
Recruit, on-board and retain top sales talent? 1 2 3
We have to ask ourselves are we better leaders when we have this knowledge, is it worth the investment to know your sales organization?
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