Posts Tagged Sales Management
What Are Leading and Lagging Indicators, and What Can They Do for You?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on December 8, 2015
Sales management is often conducted using lagging indicators – KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that show what has already happened, such as:
- Sales
- Number of units sold
- Gross margin
- Number of different products sold
We definitely need these in order to see where we’ve been and how we’ve done. But managing only with lagging indicators means you, too, are going to be lagging. Why? By the time lagging indicators become clear, it is too late to change anything.
To look into the future, we need to be able to tell how our current activities are impacting those final figures.
Leading Indicators
Now let’s take a look at the other kind of KPI, called leading indicators. Leading indicators serve as a somewhat reliable index of how our lagging indicators are going to turn out, and consist of factors that can be monitored on a day-to-day basis, such as:
- Leads created
- Leads converted to opportunities
- Sales rep closing ratio
- Percentage of opportunities through each sales process stage
The Combination
A full, usable, dynamic picture of your operation comes about only through the combination of leading and lagging indicators. Only this combination allows you to catch errors and make changes well before your lagging indicators come into effect.
A skillful combination uses leading indicators in such a way that they connect directly with potential lagging indicators – allowing you to clearly see how they will appear if you proceed as planned. For example, if you add up the value of your opportunities in your pipeline, the percentage chances of their making it through, the ranking of each deal, and other leading factors, you see that – if all goes according to plan – you’ll have $1.5 million for the quarter.
If you add up all your leading indicators and see that you’re falling short of your target, you then have time to do something about it. For example:
- Get more leads into the pipeline.
- Take steps to raise lead-to-opportunity conversion rates.
- Coach and mentor your reps to raise closing ratios.
- Monitor your sales process to makes sure it is efficient.
Automation
Unless you assign one or more sales admin staff full time to the task (which would certainly not be cost effective), you’re going to have a tough time keeping your leading indicators updated. It’s best – in fact, it’s vital – that you have an automated solution that fully incorporates your leading and lagging indicators, and allows you to watch them in real time. It’s obviously best if this solution is also your CRM solution, so everything is in one place.
So look over your sales operations. Do you have leading indicators that clearly show where your sales are headed and how you’ll get there, along with lagging indicators that show where you’ve been? Make sure these are both in place, and fully incorporated into your sales organization and automation, so you always know where you’re going.
This article was originally posted to the Selling Power Blog by Nikolaus Kimla on November 5, 2015.
Two Simple Steps to Making CRM Implementation a Breeze
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on August 17, 2015
CRM implementation can be difficult on managers and executives. In fact, if you’ve ever brought in any kind of new software, system, or process for your team to use on a daily basis, you know all about those difficulties. It’s likely you received some pushback.
Perhaps you heard things like:
- “But we’re used to this process, and it works well.”
- “Ugh… it’s just going to be one more system to manage.”
- “How is yet another software program going to make us more efficient?”
Once you start implementing a CRM, you may experience this same kind of pushback. And it’s understandable, we’re all creatures of habit. Once we get accustomed to things happening a certain way, we like them to stay that way! And the way your team does their daily work is no exception.
And let’s not forget about you! Transitioning from one way of doing things to an entirely new way can be difficult for the boss, too. Not knowing exactly how things will go, how people will react, or what to expect from a new system can make implementing a new CRM a little nerve-wracking.
Lucky for you, your CRM implementation process doesn’t have to be one that frustrates you or your team. Follow these two steps, and your team will be smooth-sailing in no time.
First: choose the right CRM.
This may seem obvious, but the system you choose will ultimately dictate how your company and team benefit from using a CRM. If you choose the right system for your company’s needs, you will certainly reap great benefits—a reduced workload for you and your team members, the need for only one system to access any information you need, simplification of the entire sales process, and a great way to begin optimizing your revenue cycle.
However, if you happen to choose a CRM that is not the best fit for you, unfortunately, there will be consequences. You may find that the system actually makes work more difficult for you, or that it lacks capabilities and features you need. If that happens, you can count on your sales team trying to work around the system. (And who could blame them?)
Team members trying to work around the system can result in:
- Your “investment” actually wasting money.
- Data you want recorded in the system being recorded elsewhere, creating multiple versions of records.
- Your sales team working inefficiently because of the time wasted figuring out how to work around the new CRM.
- Some of your leads and deals falling through the cracks because of a poorly managed sales pipeline.
Here are a couple tips to help you choose the CRM that will best fit your company. These will help you avoid the mess and the headaches that come with choosing the wrong CRM.
Specifically identify what you want to use a CRM for. Think about where your business is currently, and where you want to be. Then, identify what it’s going to take to get there. Do you need to better manage your contacts and their interactions with you? Does your sales team need more time for phone calls and closing deals? Maybe you need to have a better way to manage your pipeline. Or, perhaps you need to hone in on things your sales team needs to improve on, so sales can become a more efficient and productive department. Whatever the reasons are, you need to have them clearly identified so you’ll know what to look for in a CRM.
Now, compare each CRM system to those needs. When looking at a CRM system, compare its capabilities to the list of reasons you need a CRM. In order to be a useful CRM for your company, the core functions must align with your needs.
The core functions or focus of any given CRM can be broken into three categories: contact management, sales force automation (SFA), and sales performance management (SPM).
A CRM built for contact management is designed to focus on tracking and storing your contacts’ information (not a shocker!). CRMs made for SFA focus on automating redundant tasks and pipeline management. And CRMs for SPM give you reporting capabilities that let you track and manage your sales team’s activities so you can further better your sales department.
Knowing the core functions of a CRM will help you choose one that will align with your goals and set your company up for success. A system that isn’t designed to meet your needs will just drag your business down.
Second: train to use the CRM.
Once you have chosen the perfect CRM for your company, you absolutely need to be trained to use it. Even if the CRM boasts about an easy-to-use interface and seems user-friendly enough, it’s worth the time to train your team. If you don’t, your sales team will end up frustrated, and it will interfere with the sales process. Here’s why.
Without training, your team has to fumble around a CRM, trying to figure out how to perform basic functions in the software—never mind the more complex things. If your team is spending their time teaching themselves how to use the system, they’re spending less time with your leads, potentially causing you to lose out on sales and deals. Inevitably, your sales people will come across something they can’t teach themselves how to do, and they may even find it takes longer to do their work because they don’t know how to use the CRM properly. And once your team reaches that point, they’ll figure out a way to work around the CRM, which wastes time and money.
If you want your team to use your new CRM confidently and work more efficiently, you have to train them. Here are three ways to do it.
Attend training sessions. Some CRM companies offer live online training sessions you can register for, in order to teach you how to use the CRM. At one of these sessions, a CRM expert will walk your team through anything and everything the software can do.
Watch video demonstrations. Many companies have videos on their websites that give step-by-step instructions on how to use certain features within their CRM. And because videos allow the user to pause and rewind, your team members can learn at their own pace.
Have a reseller teach you in-person. Many CRM companies partner with resellers to provide their customers with specific services. Resellers work outside the CRM company, but have gone through extensive training for a particular CRM. If you’re looking for personalized training (and have the budget for it), bringing a reseller into your organization gives you and your team access to one-on-one coaching.
Prepare yourself for success. CRM implementation takes work. But, if you take the time to find the right CRM for your company and make sure you train your team, you’ll not only set your team up for success, but you’ll foster an environment of efficiency, productivity, and profitability.
This article was originally posted to the Business 2 Community blog by David Mackey on July 2, 2015.
Seven Responsibilities Sales Managers Must Own
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on April 20, 2015
Shifts in the business-to-business buying process have transformed selling as we know it. In the past, salespeople had a fair amount of control. They were given a territory, a pricing structure, a margin target and a set of products and services they could offer, and then sent off into the wild blue yonder. They were responsible for managing their territory and producing results. Sales management provided oversight, facilitated requests back to corporate to ensure that orders were expedited and generally stayed out of the way, unless additional support was needed to help underperformers. That’s how things used to be. Now, the role of sellers – and therefore sales managers – is much different.
The “State of Sales Productivity 2015” study by Docurated found that only one-third of a sales reps’ day is actually spent selling, while 31 percent of their time is spent searching for or creating content, and 20 percent is spent on reporting, administrative and CRM-related tasks. Nowadays, 82 percent of sales reps feel challenged by the amount of data and the time it takes to research a prospect, according to a study by IKO System.
If you want to thrive in this new era of sales, it is now up to you as a sales manager to view territories, customers and products as if assessing a financial portfolio that you are responsible for investing. The people involved, the marketing dollars spent and the efforts expended are all for you to decide. It is your responsibility to make your investments wisely.
Since the time and attention of your salespeople are part of that investment, it is your responsibility to own their calendar, their workflow and where they spend their time. You may be of the old mindset that this is micromanagement, but in today’s marketplace, the investment belongs to the company, not the sales rep. This means your role as sales manager must adapt if you want to succeed in life after the death of selling as we know it. Your new responsibilities as a sales manager include the following:
Selecting targets – There’s an adage that salespeople talk to whoever will talk to them. In the new world of selling, your responsibility is to make certain that they are talking to the decision makers who can approve large opportunities that will come to fruition in the near future. Working with sales leadership, you must establish a filter that helps to define the most likely candidates for higher-opportunity sales efforts.
Defining priorities –Help your sales force prioritize what opportunities they pursue and how much time and effort they spend on each opportunity. Good sales managers keep key opportunities that are real and relevant to the current circumstances in the crosshairs of their salespeople.
Defining time guidelines – Set and enforce guidelines for how sellers spend their time. They no longer can just meander about a territory or go on a sweep of their current account base with the intention of “checking in and finding out what’s going on.” Rather, they must undertake a strategic and surgical approach to going after identified targets in a prescribed way.
Monitoring compliance – You are responsible for providing data that allows you and other leaders in the organization to monitor what is happening in the marketplace regarding customers, competitors and surrounding regulations and technology shifts. Consistency in the execution of a sales process gives data to the organization that clarifies what works and what does not. We’re not talking about activity management and monitoring for its own sake. Your focus should be working toward compliance in the sales process to protect the integrity of the data captured so everyone has relevant data for good decision making.
Navigating the terrain – Your sales process lays out a map for action, but a map is just a two-dimensional representation of a sequential process. Good sales management also addresses the third dimension – assessing the terrain of what is going on in the marketplace based on the data you’re getting (including variant data) from the sales process. There will be occasions when you will need to send out a scouting team of select salespeople to find out new information. Then it’s up to you to analyze what they bring back and use that information to better navigate the terrain.
Securing resources – There will be occasions when competing priorities of other departments impede progress on landing a big account. It’s your responsibility to make certain that significant sales opportunities are visible to leadership and to secure from less-than-enthusiastic parties inside your organization the resources needed for a successful sales process.
Knowing when (and when not) to expedite – It’s your job to expedite what needs to be expedited—and to know when not to. If you try to expedite every opportunity, soon no one will respond. Salespeople are often viewed as that proverbial “boy who cried wolf.” For the sake of the organization and for the sake of your reputation and that of your salespeople, you’ll need to be the gatekeeper on when an opportunity needs to be expedited, and when everyone should simply follow the normal sales process.
This article was originally posted to the Sales & Marketing Management Blog by Tom Searcy on March 16, 2015.
Building a Successful Team
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on January 13, 2015
Team building is a difficult task. In order to build a great team, you need to understand other people, their strengths and weaknesses, and figure out which tasks they like to work on. If you are a manager, you should also keep in mind that you are responsible from the success of your team. This means the success of individuals working in your team equals to your success. Therefore, you should show great leadership. You should manage not only their demands for attention and acknowledgment but also make them work towards a common goal. As a result, you should learn how to place the right people to the right positions at the right time in order to sustain the success of the company.
Here are some useful tips for building a successful team:
Get To Know Each Person Very Well: You should invest time to understand each person in your team so you can bring out the best in them. For example, someone might be a very good writer but s/he may not be a good presenter. Remember every individual is different and it is your responsibility to motivate them and make them surpass beyond expectations.
Make Sure Everybody Understands Their Roles: Take the time to meet with each individual on your team and discuss their role within the team. Outline their responsibilities and explain your expectations from them. Then, make a career map together so they can see what they need in order to climb to the next level. Also, don’t forget to share the overall objective of the team. It is important that everybody understands the purpose of the team and their roles clearly so they can contribute their best.
Don’t Be A Micromanager: Trust your team to get the job done. Guide them but don’t micromanage them. Always be available to provide supervision but let them do their job. Be sure to give them constant feedback. Make regular status meetings with each team member. Don’t wait until a problem occurs to meet with them. Acknowledge and reward the team members who step up and demonstrate great performance.
Encourage Effective And Transparent Communication: Invite your team members to discuss issues and encourage everybody’s participation to the discussion. Also, keep everyone in the loop when emailing so they can follow what is going on within the team and so no one feels neglected. If there are people who cannot get along, bring them together and help them work through their problems. They don’t need to like each other but they need to understand and respect each other to be able to work together.
This article was originally posted to the Business 2 Community Blog by Ceren Cubukcu on December 15, 2014.
Five Key Sales Traits of a Rock Star Sales Rep
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on October 8, 2014
Your sales people are some of the most instrumental employees at your company. You put your business’s success in their hands. Without them, you wouldn’t be selling your products or services and you wouldn’t be making any profits.
It’s natural then that you want to find the very best sales people with necessary sales traits. Not everyone is cut out to be a sales rep; some people just don’t have the sales traits that are needed to be successful in the field. To ensure you are employing rock star sales reps, here are five key sales traits that you should keep in mind while hiring.
- Assertiveness. Assertiveness is one of the most important sales traits to ensuring a shortened sales cycle. A sales rep with this trait is persistent enough to keep going after a sale, and confident enough to believe that he can get it. Sales reps who are passive may not be able to handle rejection or close a deal if they face any type of obstacle, while overly arrogant sales reps can seem pushy and abrasive, which will turn off potential customers. Assertiveness lies somewhere in the middle, and it’s this moderation between the two that leads to success.
- Drive. Sales people are often left to their own devices. The executives know that they need the independence to build their own customer relationships, come up with their own sales tactics, and do what they need to do to close a sale. Of the many sales traits a person can have, drive is vital to success. A sales rep with drive will not quit until he has that sale. A driven sales person has goals, and will figure out how to accomplish them without any prodding. He is determined, persistent, and passionate.
- Empathy. Empathy is subtle, but it’s one of the most invaluable sales traits that a successful sales rep can have. An empathic sales person can relate to the customers, understand their needs and concerns, and can really identify with them and put them at ease. An empathetic sales person can gain the customers’ trust and create strong connections with them. Customers feel like they are important and that the sales rep is really interested in providing them with a solution to their problem. This interpersonal sales trait ensures that the building blocks to long-term customer relations are set in place, so the customers will want to work with your company for the near future.
- Focus. A sales rep can have all the personality sales traits needed to charm the prospects, but if he doesn’t have focus to get the job done, all the leg work will have been a waste of time. A sales rep with focus is internally driven to accomplish his goals above all else. He can stay on topic long enough to close the sale, while clearly stating objectives, providing clear and direct answers to questions and possessing the self-discipline needed to stay on target.
- Optimism. Your prospects won’t want to be around negative sales people. When your sales rep has optimism, people will naturally want to be around him. What’s more, it’s vital for your sales rep to have this trait when things go awry. If one morning sales call goes terribly, an optimistic person will brush it off and believe that the next meeting will be better. A negative person will let this failure affect his performance for the rest of the day, or week. An optimistic person will not let anything get them down, whether it’s a bad economy or a bad day.
There are five sales traits that every rock star sales rep needs to have to succeed. When you know what these traits are, you can create the fiercest sales team possible for your business, which will in turn create a high return on investment and boost your profits.
This article was originally posted to the Sales Force Search Blog by Brett Evans on October 4, 2014.
How To Get Higher CRM Adoption Rates
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on September 16, 2014
We’ve all heard the staggering statistics behind this-and-that CRM product. “Will cut lead gen time in half in 90 days!” or better yet, “Gain 85% more customers per year!” Right.
The unfortunate thing is many really terrific CRM products actually can have a monumental impact on your sales process. That is, if anyone would use them.
The trick to finding a CRM product that actually benefits your business is figuring out how to get people to actually adopt and use the process, and not just some people. Everyone. Over 66% of companies say they have a hard time raising adoption rates over about 50%. That’s a discouraging number.
Here are a few ways to get higher CRM adoption rates without losing your whole sales team to Groupon or Apple or whatever the foosball-in-the-breakroom-company of the month is.
Make Your CRM Software Unavoidable
Doesn’t that sound…annoying? At first, yes. There’s really no getting around the inevitable discomfort that comes with implementing a new CRM, akin to getting a new phone with a whole bunch of foreign-seeming buttons to learn. Before you launch companywide, it’s crucial to put safeguards in place that consistently remind your team to use the CRM, trust the CRM, love the CRM. Also, make it difficult (and awkward) to avoid the CRM-driven data at meetings and in status reports and you’ll see adoption rates rise.
Put Your CRM in the “Cloud”
Cloud computing doesn’t just make things more convenient for everyone, it’s going to make your employees more mobile. That’s a great value-add! If you can find a way to reward employees who are consistent with their CRM use with flexibility (say, work from home Fridays or longer lunches) you’re going to see more people taking advantage. In general, your staff is going to care most about the things that make their life easier too, not just yours.
Choose a CRM that can be Customized
There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of CRM products out there, some great and some best left to go the route of Pets.com. Of course, juggernauts like Salesforce have a lot to offer businesses but it may make more sense to find a product that’s specifically designed for your industry and for the type of sales team you employ. The more simple customization your CRM product offers at a user-level, the higher your usage rates are going to be.
Analyze the Data Often and Openly
Think fast: what’s the point of CRM software? If you said, “to keep my lazy employees on track,” then you are a terrible, terrible boss. The real reason CRM is valuable is cold, hard data. Whoever “owns” CRM in your office should regularly offer insights based on the data it provides and also make that data available to the sales team. Not only will this give everyone a little more ownership, it will prove the point that your fancy new CRM setup isn’t going anywhere.
You can’t force employees to use your CRM, but you can give them a lot of incentives. The more attractive you make a CRM-driven workplace the higher your adoption rates are going to be. Every. Single. Time.
This article was originally posted to the Mindmulch blog by Ryan Currie (guest blogger) on November 18, 2013.
Ryan Currie is a product manager at BizShark.com, with 5 years experience in online marketing and product development. In addition to web related businesses, he also enjoys the latest news and information on emerging technologies and open source projects.
Twelve Reasons You May Be In a Sales Slump
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on July 29, 2014
Sales numbers are down and you’re starting to sweat. As a sales manager, you must act quickly to turn things around when you first see the numbers dip. You need to diagnose the problems and make changes immediately so your team doesn’t fall short of the sales goal for the quarter or year.
To help you get to the root of the issues impacting your sales results, here’s a quick summary of twelve common problems which can lead to a sales slump. By pivoting quickly and making a few key changes to your team and its process, you may very likely see a boost to your sales.
1. Limited sales training – Sales reps can’t naturally catch onto your sales strategy and product strengths without the right preparation and tools. Extensive training on products, re-training on new products, sales skills classes, and more, are all necessary to adequately prepare your sales team.
2. Lack of Sales Coaching – Training should not be the end of the learning process for the sales team. Implementing consistent, one-on-one coaching with your people is vital to continued improvement of sales skills and increased performance.
3. Lack of a sales process – If your sales people aren’t aware of what sales techniques are working and which ones aren’t, it’s impossible for your team to improve. Create a detailed sales process to standardize successful selling methods across your team.
4. No visibility into the sales pipeline – If you’re not aware of every opportunity in your sales pipeline, you’ll lose control of your sales team. Use analytics to track key metrics like the behavior of closed/won deals, the length of your sales cycle, win rates, conversion rates by stage and the rate of growth for the overall pipeline.
5. Incorrect sales forecasting – If you’re not using historical data to extrapolate your sales quarter-to-quarter, you’re really just guessing and crossing your fingers. Use data analytics to improve the accuracy of your forecasts so you won’t miss your goals again.
6. Confusing quotas – Your sales reps should know exactly what goals they are required to meet each month, quarter, and year. If they’re not constantly aware of the goals, they may not work as hard. Try implementing a sales leaderboard to push your team to reach competitive goals incorporating gamification.
7. Confusing compensation – Similar to quotas, your sales people should know exactly how their compensation plan works. Your plan should be clear-cut and tied directly to sales results, motivating your team to sell hard.
8. Poor time management – Sales reps should be logging their activities daily in your CRM so you can monitor how many calls, meetings and demos they give per day. If you see one of your sales people falling behind in activity levels, you can offer sales coaching to help them to get back on track and improve their results.
9. Bad objection handling – If your sales people aren’t prepared to handle the standard sales objections that come up on a call, they will never succeed in closing a deal. You should have a playbook of common objections and train your team to expect people to resist the price, timing or another factor in the sale, and help them deal effectively with these objections to close.
10. Working unqualified opportunities – If there isn’t a sufficient process for qualifying leads, your sales team will struggle. Sales people will waste time chasing prospects that don’t have enough pain, have no purchasing power, or have a long timeline and no urgency. Make a plan to qualify leads extensively before they pick up the phone.
11. Misalignment with marketing – Aligning sales and marketing teams is always a challenge, but it is vital for sales success. If the handoff of leads between the two isn’t smooth, or the two groups have completely different goals, you’ll struggle to see sales results.
12. Product is devalued – The key to closing sales isn’t always offering a discount to the buyer. In fact, you may have accidentally devalued your own product by cutting your price too much. This can hurt margins and still not increase overall profits. Work with marketing to price your product, based on the perceived value of your product in the market.
Now that you understand some of the major pitfalls that can drag down your sales team, you can alter sales strategies, coaching, and communication to help your team succeed. By making some high-level changes, your sales team can turn things around and exceed their goals.
Are Your Sales Meetings Destroying Your Sales Team and Undermining Your Authority?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on February 24, 2014
Are your weekly sales meetings building your team, your credibility, and your company’s sales or are they destroying morale, motivation, and undermining your authority? Unfortunately most sales meeting do far more harm than good to the sales team, the sales leader, and the company.
They don’t have to. In fact, regular (regular does not necessarily mean weekly) sales meetings can be the backbone of creating a thriving, high production sales team. Most often, however, they are the ruination of the sales team.
Weekly sales meetings have killed more manager authority and respect than probably any other activity a manager engages in with the possible exception of the ride along. They have also driven a great number of high performers to the competition, one of which may be my client Richard who is one of the top 5 sellers in his company’s 300 member sales force.
Sales people generally hate this weekly meandering through sales meeting hell and the accompanying glimpse into the hollow caverns of the sales management brain in stupefying inaction.
Why? I believe there are four primary reasons sales meetings are such a waste of time and effort:
1. No purpose. A great many sales meetings are held for no other reason other that it’s Monday (or Friday, or Thursday, or whatever day of the week they are normally held on). Consequently, the meeting is destined to be a time waster. One time wasting meeting is bad enough, but I know of some companies who have three or even five of these meetings every week (often these multi-meeting companies are seeking to keep control of their salespeople).
2. No preparation. Whomever is in charge of the meeting (generally the immediate manager of the assembled team) has invested not a single minute in preparing for the meeting. As they’re sitting down for the meeting, they take out a pen and jot down two or three things to talk about. Again, it is the perfect setting for a waste of time.
3. Too many tangents. Without having prepared for the meeting and knowing exactly what to deal with, it is easy for the manager to veer off onto tangents that ultimately have nothing to do with anything. Yet another factor that guarantees the meeting will be useless.
4. A haven of negativity. Especially during times like the present when business is tough, an unprepared manager tends to focus on trying to cajole numbers out of his or her team. People are put up for ridicule in front of their peers because of poor numbers, they are forced to justify their performance, and the rest sit in silence, knowing their turn is next once the manager has finished “coaching” their current prey. Now not only is the meeting a waste of time, it is a real morale killer too.
Great, so sales meetings suck. Everyone already knows that. What can managers do to make sales meetings valuable? I’ve found four simple rules seem to work very, very well:
1. No purpose, no meeting. Only hold meetings when there is a REASON to hold a meeting. That may be once a month, once every two weeks, once a week, or as needed. The company no longer paying for coffee is not a reason for a meeting; that’s a memo. Reviewing the pre-call planning steps is a reason for a meeting.
2. No preparation, no meeting. If for any reason the person managing the meeting has not had time to thoroughly prepare, the meeting is canceled. There is no excuse for wasting the team member’s time because the manager didn’t get their job done.
3. A sales meeting is not the place for individual coaching. A sales meeting is a group activity. Address the group’s needs and issues, not individual salespeople’s. There is no excuse for denigrating anyone in front of the group or for wasting the group’s time for individual coaching. Each team member should have coaching time scheduled outside the sales meeting. The rule is, if a meeting degenerates into individual coaching, the team members are free to leave (note, however, that answering a specific issue a team member has with the subject matter being discussed is not individual coaching).
4. Set a time limit, stick to it. Salespeople need to be selling, not attending meetings. Under normal circumstances, sales meetings should be kept to an hour or less. Only under extraordinary circumstances should a meeting exceed an hour.
Your sales meetings should concentrate on helping team members sell. Reviewing market conditions; presenting new products or services; reviewing sales skills such as prospecting, making presentations, asking questions, pre-call planning, and the other aspects of selling and the sales process; role playing activities; and other core content should be the heart of the meeting. Seller recognition and reinforcement should also be an integral aspect of your meetings. Leave the meeting on a high note, not a downer. Housekeeping notes and announcements should be kept at a minimum—discarded completely and put into memos if at all possible.
Meetings are important, but too many meetings or too much wasted time turns what could be a valuable tool into a wrecking ball plowing through your team, leaving lifeless, dispirited bodies in its wake. If your meetings are unorganized, are designed to do little more than keep control of your salespeople, or drag on incessantly, you’re killing your team, not building it.
Turn your sales meetings into real strengths, not team killers–both you and your team members will be glad you did—and within short order you’ll actually see some smiles and enthusiasm Monday morning instead of the deadwood that drags itself into the meeting room.
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This article originally appeared in the Sales and Sales Management Blog on February 4, 2014.
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Five Characteristics of a Successful Sales Team
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on September 13, 2013
In order to build a successful sales team, sales managers and executives need to know the characteristics of a successful sales team in order to choose the right candidates. When the right sales people are on a sales team and the sales manager is actively involved in promoting the team’s success, that team will become successful. Here are five characteristics that all successful sales teams share.
1. A Successful Sales Team Is Collaborative
The days where a single sales person could routinely land major accounts alone are fast receding. This is due in part to changing customer expectations; prospects need to feel that someone at a vendor is always available, and team selling helps fulfill that need. A successful sales team is made up of individuals who thrive in a team environment and are therefore able to cooperate and collaborate on major accounts. This also means that sales compensation and incentive plans should have contingencies for equitably recognizing each sales person who made a contribution towards closing a major sale.
2. A Successful Sales Team Is Able to Self-Direct
Most top sales people are described as driven and self-directed. In a successful sales team, the majority of individuals fit this description. Sales people who are not able to self-direct and meaningfully contribute to team accomplishments and dialogue have little place in and rarely last long on a successful sales team. The self-direction of a successful sales team comes from many sources, including:
* Peer support. Members of a successful sales team tend to look to one another for assistance before requiring direction from the sales manager.
* Knowledge of resources. Sales people on a successful sales team are intimately familiar with the resources available, and will use these resources to their maximum potential.
* A comprehensive recruiting plan. The recruiting plan for a successful sales team must actively search for and select individuals who will thrive in the environment.
3. A Successful Sales Team Manages Its Time
Few things are more frustrating than seeing opportunities slip away due to poor time management. With a successful sales team, this is rarely a problem. Combined with the other characteristics of a thriving sales team, excellent time management skills allow such a team to coordinate individual effort to ensure that no sale is missed due to time pressures. These time management skills also allow these sales teams to make time for other priorities such as development and coaching without negatively impacting sales numbers.
4. A Successful Sales Team Has Inherently Strong Communication
Communication on any sales team is key, but the successful sales team makes communication an art form. At any time on a successful sales team, team members will be in routine contact with one another, team supervisors and managers, and promising leads and prospects. In such a sales team, sales opportunities are rarely dropped because the dialogue is kept open and active – while management is always aware of the status of important opportunities and sales targets. This communication also allows the sales team to:
* Understand what must be accomplished in order to meet quota.
* Give valuable input on the sales process to make improvements for even better sales team performance.
* Pivot where required when priorities or goals are changed as business needs evolve, without substantial disruption to the existing pipeline.
5. A Successful Sales Team Enjoys Winning
The thrill of winning is one of the drives behind most major sales achievements. A successful sales team is motivated by the thrill of accomplishment for its own sake, and the manager of this team will find that monetary incentives often come in second place. This does not mean that monetary incentives should be phased out; many sales people count this as a strong motivation. However, sales managers looking to build a successful sales team may want to move the strategy away from compensation and look to the non-monetary characteristics of a successful sales team first.
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The article was originally posted to the SalesForce Search Blog by Matt Cook on August 30, 2013
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Does Your Sales Dashboard Have The Right Indicators? (reprise)
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES, SALES LEADERSHIP on September 9, 2013
I posted this article about a year ago and, after a recent discussion with a client, I thought it would be worthwhile to bring it back from the archives to help remind others.
The idea of a sales dashboard is appealing. What business manager wouldn’t like to run their company like a well-oiled machine, with the help of a few select indicators? But in practice, it is ironically the choice of these indicators which can stall the effectiveness of the sales dashboard…
Every company is certainly different, and it goes without saying an industrial equipment maker cannot manage its sales process (for example) like a travel agency, or a service provider. However, here’s some tips on zeroing in on the right indicator can be helpful in the majority of situations.
Choose indicators which are useful throughout the sales process – As the saying goes, you shouldn’t count your chickens until they hatch. Nevertheless, you want to manage your sales process continuously, not just once a quarter. It’s important to avoid indicators which only become meaningful at the end. For example, “Actual/Projected sales” is more useful when compared to its historical average at that stage of the quarter.
Be selective – you start with the laudable intention to stick to the essentials, but find yourself a few months later with a computer screen that looks more like a spacecraft cockpit than the clear-cut dashboard of your dreams. To be more selective, ask yourself this question before adding another indicator to your sales dashboard: is it directly related to what your company is trying to achieve (i.e. prospects progressing along your pipeline), or is it merely informative?
Choose actionable indicators – avoid indicators which look sexy but don’t bring anything tangible to the table. A traditional indicator that clearly points you in the right direction is better than a “sophisticated” one which needs to be explained to everyone and even leaves you scratching your head.
Favor dynamic indicators – one which measures a sales team’s progress. A static indicator only measures an activity. For example, “Number of leads qualified/Week” is a dynamic indicator, while on the same subject “Number of qualification calls/Week” is a static indicator. From this example we can infer that a dynamic indicator is naturally outward-looking (i.e. focused on prospect dynamics) while a static indicator is often inward-looking (i.e. concerned with your team’s processes).
Beware of environmental indicators – those which are focused on your company’s environment (e.g. “Number of RFPs in my sector”) are most certainly outward-looking. Yet, do they belong on your sales dashboard? Not especially. You’re interested in your company’s performance, which only indirectly depends on its environment. Environmental indicators are rarely actionable, unless you are matching them to a triggering threshold. For example, you could decide to re-contact your existing client base systematically when the number of RFPs in your sector falls below a threshold of ten per month.
Certainly there are others, more specific to your particular situation. The objective here is to give you a starting point. Get you thinking about what’s key to steer your sales process to success. As always I’m interested in what you think and what you’ve found to be effective in your sales dashboard. I invite your comments, ideas and suggestions.
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