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Sales Process and Selling Tools
This is one sales lever that most companies do a fairly good job with. Nearly all Sales Executives are very familiar with the consultative, discovery-driven sales process and not many people need to be convinced this is the right approach. Most training organizations offer these program and have for years. There is, however, a big difference between knowing what to do and being able to do it skillfully, under pressure, which is why Sales Coaching and Sales Training are so important.
"Once we developed really good Sales Trainers, we started looking for a different kind of Sales Person. In the past, we tried to hire and poach experienced people that could bring business with them and didn't "need" to be managed or trained. That created a lot of problems. We had no consistency, a lot of resistance to using a consistent sales process and a lot challenges managing them.
We changed our approach based on your recommendations and we built a great Sales Training Team and program. We looked for people with desire and the right attitude. What a difference. They learned our systems, our sales methods and are much more flexible than we ever thought possible. Our recruiting costs are down and we don't have the turnover we used to have. What's most important though, is the interaction between our Sales Trainers and our Sales People and front-line Managers. They are all integrated together now. The Trainers do a lot of the day-to-day coaching and the impact they are having is incredible. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine our Sales Trainers could have as much impact as they're having today.
Jack L. - Sales Executive
Software Sales
The 8 Key Sales Levers that Matter Most
Compensation and Incentives
There is absolutely no doubt that compensation and incentives play a huge roll in the performance of the Sales Team. It is true that we get what we pay for. This is an area that generates a lot of attention, time and analysis in sales organizations. If you want to attract and retain quality people you must have a competitive comp plan. Given how complex this topic is and how varied it is from company to company, there are no sweeping fundamentals. Compensation will not solve all problems... not even close... but it will help attract and keep top performers.
Sales Coaching
It is not possible to over state how important this Sales Lever is. Sales teams improve at a much faster pace with less expense if rigorous sales coaching is happening every day between front line Sales Managers/Coaches and their Sales People. Unfortunately, too many sales organizations do not understand what effective sales coaching is which is why it is often the critical missing link.
Sales Training
Remarkably, many sales organizations today do not even have full time Sales Trainers and we're talking about companies with thousands of Sales People. They outsource it or leave it up to the local Sales Manager who, more often than not, has little experience with training. Sales Training is the most under-utilized of the 8 levers and the one that is relatively easy to execute and most likely to generate the quickest results. Sales Training includes training Sales People and Sales Coaches and the Managers that need to hold the front-lines Sales Teams accountable.
"We spend so much time and resources on recruiting and comparatively, very little on training. The truth is, our Sales Trainers were typically young, energetic, filled with enthusiasm and not very credible. They weren't able to give good demonstrations and they just didn't have the experience to get our new recruits off to a good start. That all changed when we started really training our Sales Trainers. I can't believe we missed that piece of the puzzle for so long. When they started improving, their training programs produced much better results. We learned that the content and curriculum is, in reality, a relatively small part of what makes a real results-oriented training approach. It's repetition, practice and incremental progress. That's a hard skill for Trainers to learn and the payoff, at least for us, was huge.
James S. - Sales Executive
B2B Networking Hardware Sales
More Quotes Being added each week
Lead Generation
There are many methods to generate good selling opportunities and companies approach this in every conceivable way. Finding good, qualified, high potential new selling opportunities is truly the fuel that drives a thriving sales organization. This is a topic that has been covered in great depth in many books and will not be a major focus of this book, but it is critically important.
"When we asked you to do an assessment of our Sales Organization and you said our biggest weakness was Sales Coaching, we were furious. How could that be? We had just completed a two-year Sales Coaching training program that cost us $8,300 per Sales Coach for a grand total of $1,369,500. But when we did the exercise you gave us of picking up the phone and calling 30 of our Sales People randomly and asking them to give us 3 competitive advantages, our value proposition, what differentiates us in the market and a simple voice mail to a new prospect asking for an appointment, the results were more infuriating. 26 of the 30 could not do it convincingly. That's when we realized we had a real Sales Coaching problem and thankfully, started to fix it."
Angela R - SVP Sales - Commercial Banking
Compensation and Incentives
There is absolutely no doubt that compensation and incentives play a huge roll in the performance of the Sales Team. It is true that we get what we pay for. This is an area that generates a lot of attention, time and analysis in sales organizations. If you want to attract and retain quality people you must have a competitive comp plan. Given how complex this topic is and how varied it is from company to company, there are no sweeping fundamentals. Compensation will not solve all problems... not even close... but it will help attract and keep top performers.
More Quotes from Leading Sales Executives, Managers and Trainers
“Looking back over the last year, I can honestly say we were simply not focused on the right priorities before we started this sales transformation project with Dycoco. We were way to focused on technology, were not coaching our sales people, were not training our coaches or sales trainers and we certainly weren't leading in a way that energized the team. A lot has changed. Our Managers are excited again, we're closing deals faster with less cost and the most exciting thing is we're attracting a much higher quality new hire than we ever used to. We had a lot to learn.”
Cheri D - Executive Vice President Sales - Retail Banking
Recruiting
This is a sales lever that really matters... always has and always will. The key is whether to recruit newer (younger?) high potential Sales People and then train them on your system or to recruit hired guns that are experiences, trained, may bring business and contacts with them and can present some issues in terms of managing them and fitting into a cohesive and effective culture. The best sales organizations tend to do a mixture of both while maintaining a strong training culture to make sure everyone learns and supports the existing sales culture.
Outline of Key Points in this chapter:
"We were pretty surprised at how little return on investment we got from our CRM System we really committed to about 5 years ago. It has been a huge struggle to get everyone to use it and the cost has been more than we expected. There is no question that we needed it and it has helped us, but it has also turned a lot of our Sales Managers into data analysts that prefer to stay in their offices. When we started using the CRM system, as you suggested, to measure and report how much time our Sales Managers spent doing skills coaching and training drills, things started to change. There is a lot of potential with these systems but you have to use them to generate more sales and coaching minutes. That was the key we were just missing.
Harris K. - EVP Sales
Real Estate Management Services
There are 8 important sales levers Sales Executives, Managers and Trainers can use to lift up the performance of sales teams. They are:
- Sales Coaching
- Sales Training
- The Sales Process and Selling Tools
- Compensation and Incentives
- Technology / CRM / Pipeline Management Tools
- Recruiting
- Lead Generation
- Organization of the Sales Team / Assistants / Admin Help
Maximum results with minimal expense come from skillful execution of all 8 of these sales levers. We have found, after interacting with thousands of sales teams from hundreds of companies, that the three most common weaknesses (85% of companies) are Sales Coaching, Sales Training and Organization of the Sales Team. We will spend considerably more time in this book on these three topics than the other 5 simply because they're such common weaknesses and offer tremendous opportunity if improvements can be made.
The ultimate leverage comes from a strong sales culture brought on intentionally by a strong sales coaching culture. This is a very powerful competitive advantage that can be achieved and this book will show you and your entire Sales Management Team how to raise performance, lower costs and reduce unnecessary conflict and confusion..
Bedrock Sales Communication Tools
Dycoco trains athletes to become world class speakers the way they were coached as athletes
Chapter Overview and Selected Quotes likely to be used
Organization of the Sales Team / Admin Assistants / Inside and Outside Teams
How to use technology and Sales Assistants to enable the Sales People to spend more time speaking with customers and potential buyers is a vital topic. How we organize the front-line Sales Managers so that plenty of real coaching occurs is equally important. We will look closely at these two vital topics.