Sales Performance Improvement

Each year companies need to improve their performance in sales not only because of cost pressures but more importantly because they will lose between 5-20% of their customer base each year. This means that in 3 years they will be less than half the size they are now if they do nothing else!
Due largely to companies going into receivership, mergers and takeovers or exit, it is nonetheless a critical factor in the success or otherwise of any business. Just to stand still every company needs to find more business from existing customers as well as finding new ones. The need to improve sales performance is self evident.
Under these circumstances most business owners exhort their sales staff to work harder as if somehow doing more of the same thing will result in better figures when doing more of the same thing brings in more of the same results. It is important to recognise the need to work smarter and not necessarily harder.
So how can we bring about these "smarter" results?
There are a number of areas that can be considered in improving sales performance, not all of them may apply to your situation.
Focus Are your sales staff focusing on the right customers with the right products? Do they assess customers and prospects potential? Or do they just rely on what they did in the past?
Motivation.
It is important that they understand their role in the business. Often this is not the case. If in doubt ask them! The vision you have for the company should be shared by everyone to promote involvement and motivation.
Objectives
Their objectives should be aligned with that vision. It is surprising how many companies do not do this. For instance, there was one case where a company needed growth but the sales team were targeted with maintaining existing customer business.
Cross-Sell and Up-sell
Every opportunity should be taken to cross-sell and up-sell. Cross-selling (other products) and up-selling (superior product, higher grade service) increase the take from the customer for little or no increase in costs of selling to that customer.
Skills
Ensure the sales force is trained in the latest sales techniques because you can be sure the buyer is trained in how to combat them! Training, development and reinforcement of the skills they learn as well as feedback on their performance is vital to ensure that you are getting the best out of the work force
Prospecting
Does the sales team spend time on prospecting? This is the feedstock of your sales pipeline. If they do not, you are running on empty. Do they know which markets to tackle, where and what type of customer the company needs.
Needs and Offer
Do your sales team identify you customers' needs or do they just sell the features of the product or service? Do they consider the whole of your offer or just the products and services? In many cases customers are persuaded not just by the product but by other items such as delivery, terms and conditions or just want to deal with you!
There are of course many other areas to be discussed in an article such as this but simply asking yourself and your team the questions posed above will put you and your business on the road to Sales Performance Improvement.

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By Bob Francis

Bob Francis is an experienced business consultant spending most of his time helping clients with sales and marketing issues. His expertise lies primarily in strategy, sales and marketing and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He is an expert at sales performance measurement and improvement.

Sales Force Management - How to Hire and Employ Talented Sales Professionals

Hiring Sales Professionals: Don't Trust Your Gut
Anyone who has managed salespeople has made hiring mistakes. At one time or another, all of us have found ourselves unable to resist hiring a candidate who seemed to be a sales superstar, even though our intuition made us uneasy or something in their story just didn't jibe with reality. In an increasingly competitive world, success will depend on getting the right people on the sales team and making sure they are doing jobs that best use their innate talents.
Get The Right People On The Team
According to the International Personnel Management Association, typical hiring methods are ineffective. If you simply pointed, blindfolded, to one among a group of candidates and hired that person, your hiring method would depend entirely on chance. If your hiring process includes a typical employment interview, your odds of improving over chance increase about 1%.
If your hiring process includes a standard personality test, you will improve your odds over chance by another 1%. If, along with the interview and personality test, you require a candidate to have relevant job experience your chances of a good hire increase to 5%. If you include a scoreable interview in your hiring process your odds of a good hire increase to about 7%.
If your company is among a growing number of firms that include validated and objectively administered selection tests in the hiring process, you can increase your chances of a good hire by up to 25%. An improvement of 25% may not impress you, but the math shows that this is an improvement of 257% over even the best interview processes that lack selection tests!
So, exactly how would a validated and objectively administered selection test help you avoid making hiring mistakes? These tests reveal not only aptitude for performance, but also a candidate's willingness to perform the duties of the particular sales position. The tests answer the questions: Can the candidate do the job, and is the candidate likely to do the job?
Allocating Sales Talent: Don't Send Ducks to Eagles School!
Assuming you've hired a salesperson based on the results of a validated selection test, it is now imperative to place the new employee in the right position on the team.
I once heard someone admonish sales managers: "Don't send your ducks to eagle school!" It just won't work. Unlike eagles, which are skilled predators hard-wired with a hunter's instinct, ducks are friendly creatures. You send the ducks out hunting, they find a rabbit and they make friends with it! You then yell to the ducks, "No, no, reread page twenty-one of your hunting manual!"
The same thing happens when you send the wrong salespeople on a hunting expedition for new prospects. They make friends with potential customers, buy them lunch, treat them to sporting events, and shower them with expensive gifts, all in the hope of winning business through friendship. But the new business seldom materializes. In frustration, you yell, "No, no, bring in the orders, close the prospects, close the prospects!"
Nearly 2500 years ago in his essay on The Art Of War, Sun Tzu, the great Chinese military thinker admonished, "Do not demand accomplishment of those who have no talent." He continued, "Do not charge people to do what they cannot do. Select them and give them responsibilities commensurate with their abilities." This wisdom has been largely lost on leaders who manage sales organizations.
Talent can't be trained. You either can or cannot sing like an American Idol. In the world of selling, the characteristics of great strategic account managers - by definition - limit their success as business development sales professionals. Likewise, great business development salespeople rarely have what it takes to become great strategic account managers. Both require different skills and different talents! Yet somehow sales leaders believe that talent in one area naturally translates into an ability to perform equally well in other areas.
Coaching Talent
Although you've done your best to select the right talent, and to make sure she has the right position on the team, how do you retain her and develop her innate abilities? First, you continually review your employee's assessment test to remain knowledgeable about her natural abilities and willingness to perform certain job functions. Second - and this is a key to successful talent management- you resist the temptation to place her in a job for which her talent and interests are not aligned.
When it comes to utilizing sales talent, perhaps the biggest error most sales leaders make is promoting great salespeople to the role of sales manager. Most often, when a great salesperson is promoted to sales manager, four things happen:

1) the company loses a great salesperson;

2) the company gets a mediocre - or worse - sales manager

3) customers suffer in the transition;

4) failure prompts the great salesperson to flee to another company.
We believe that much of the money spent by business on sales training is spent educating people in roles they should not occupy. At some point companies will demand a better system for selecting salespeople and sales management candidates with the talent and the will to perform up to management's expectations. For many companies this, and not simply more sales skills training, may become their single most important investment to improve market share and profitability. Using statistically validated assessment tests in the hiring process, placing salespeople only in jobs for which their talents and interests are aligned and developing career paths that allow employees to expand their natural talents is a win-win for the employees and the company.

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By Steve Chriest
Steve Chriest is a sought-after sales consultant, author and speaker. He is a founding partner of Selling Up, a San Francisco-based sales development consulting firm. Selling Up can be found on the Web at http://www.selling-up.com Steve can be reached by email at schriest@selling-up.com

Ten Key Factors That Maximize Sales

Sales representatives are successful today because they gain the majority of their targeted customers business. They manage the relationship and continuously build relationship equity. That doesn't mean they operate with the old lone wolf mentality doing everything under the sun for the customer. They are successful because they take full advantage of all the resources their company has to offer. Transactions and promos flow through a managed relationship. They also dedicate a specific amount of their time to new account development and penetration of those accounts with high potential rather than over providing service functions to existing accounts. Ten Key identifying factors that will help maximize sales success include;
1. Not being afraid to prospect for new accounts and new business. Have enough confidence to view rejection as simply a step closer to success.
2. Understanding the value of planning and actually documenting the key actions necessary to meet specific objectives at specific accounts.
3. Become professional with your planned presentations whether it is to an individual buyer or a group of customer decision makers. Perfect your 25 word elevator speech that clearly outlines your value proposition. Get it down pat for those opportunistic moments that may occur.
4. Goals are a matter of course and they include more than just revenue and margin growth. Milestones are established for target accounts to highlight progress toward their major goals.
5. No one likes record keeping and paperwork but the really successful sales professional understands the necessity and the value received in return for being methodical with their record keeping.
6. Time management should be forever on your mind and you need to continuously practice efficient time control.
7. You've got to be Hunnnnggggrrrry! Hungry for knowledge to improve your skills and demonstrate enough curiosity that you don't wait for company sponsored seminars for education and training. Read, listen to tapes and finance your own self improvement in addition to company programs.
8. Don't chase orders, chase customers. Be willing to lose an order but fight aggressively to never lose a customer unless you need to prune your territory garden due to unacceptable profitability.
9. Your objective on every sales call is to identify the customer's real needs, not to just take an order. Take pride in being a solution provider and demand creator instead of a demand fulfiller.
10. Understand that often a key to your success lies in your ability to educate the customer. This may range in the form of business acumen to helping the customer understand real value. Become an expert at demonstrating the difference between price and cost.
The formula for success is simple:
FIND THE CUSTOMER PAIN -------TAKE THE PAIN AWAY SET YOUR PRICE
Customers will pay plenty, if you can reduce their "PAIN" Find out what the customer's problems are and where they are in pain. Look at it from their point of view, not yours.
Customers no longer spout off about quality products and reliable deliveries. That's a given. Although all customers are trained to say "Your Price is to High", if you find the pain, price is not an issue. Remember the emerging role of the sales professional today is not to increase sales. Let me repeat that--- your role today is not to increase sales. Your role as a sales professional today is to systematically and consistently increase the number of customers who choose you to be their #1 supplier........
It's not about Features and Benefits
Today it's not about the features and benefits of your product. It's about value and how your customers are going to make a profit. You no longer just sell yourself and everything falls into place. Today, relationships are still very important but they are the ante to play. Customers are smarter and more educated. You must bring every resource your company has into play and leverage those resources to create competitive advantage. Learn to really listen to your customers. Let them talk and when there seems to be a pause in the conversation resist the temptation to start talking again. Chances are good that the customer has more to say. The quieter you are the more they will tell you. Listen long enough with a few strategically placed questions and the customer might just tell you exactly how to gain his business. (And it won't just be about price)
http://www.ceostrategist.com - Sign up to receive "The Howl" a free monthly newsletter that addresses real world industry issues. - Straight talk about today's issues. Rick Johnson, expert speaker, wholesale distribution's "Leadership Strategist", founder of CEO Strategist, LLC a firm that helps clients create and maintain competitive advantage. Need a speaker for your next event, E-mail rick@ceostrategist.com
Don't forget to check out the Lead Wolf Series that can help you put more profit into your business.

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By Rick Johnson