Sales Management: The Missing Link?
Sales Management can be a challenge. You have a great product, your team has been through a sales training program, you have set targets, incentives are in place, but the results are still well below expectations!
Sound familiar? In business we can spend a lot of time and effort training our people, putting together elaborate incentive plans only to end up with results still falling well short of target.
If training has been provided and all other key marketing elements are in place, at Client Edge we invariably find the reason for the shortfall, is the lack of a structure to ensure the skills learned are in fact implemented, when the team return to the coalface.
That is, no effective processes have been developed to measure & monitor implementation of behaviours learned!
Without this, the full potential of any training program will never be realised – particularly those that relate to sales!
In Sales Management we believe in the truism - “What gets measured, gets done!”
This means measuring and rewarding the behaviours needed to ensure success!
The key point being that whilst targets are important, they are only ever achieved if key behaviours are performed in a regular and disciplined way.
Following from this, we believe a sales team needs to be given specific behavioural targets in order to achieve the desired financial outcomes of an organisation.
Whilst the behavioural targets will differ from business to business – in broad terms they may encompass:
The number of phone calls per week to clients and prospects. Such calls needing to have a specific sales related purpose.
The number of client visits per week.
The number of visits or presentations to prospects per week.
The number of cross, or up-sells per week.
A set number of meetings per week with other team members, to discuss how offerings to clients could be improved.
In order to drive the right sort of activity, targets need to be set for each key behaviour – and be linked to the financial outcomes needed.
Sales Management - The Sales Cycle
To reinforce the behaviour and learning’s, the next step is to establish a weekly sales cycle.
For example on Monday the Sales Team need to commit to specific actions for each behaviour.
How much?
What?
By when?
Note: It is important that when recording the number of activities, they are linked to specific client or prospect names.
On Friday, the results need to be reviewed. Ideally, all commitments and results should be shared with the whole team.
The value of the short sales cycle is that:
Successes can be acknowledged & celebrated.
Learnings can be reinforced.
Best practices shared.
When something hasn't worked, it opens the opportunity for discussion. Allows the team to work develop alternate strategies.
Facilitates early intervention where additional coaching is required.
A key benefit of the weekly sales cycle is that knowledge is quickly built as to what works, what doesn’t and where the focus needs to to achieve the best outcomes.
Like many things in business, the key to success of any sales program, is the discipline around implementation & measurement of the behaviours needed to achieve success.
Where to start…
The first step is to work out, based on experience:
The key behaviours that lead to sales outcomes in your business.
The “how many” of each behaviour is required in order to achieve your financial goals. (This initial calculation may be a little problematic for some businesses – however if a disciplined approach is taken to the weekly sales cycle, more accurate information will quickly be revealed).
For example:
Calculate the average sale in $ terms achieved in your business. Divide this into your annual sales target. This will then tell you how many sales you need to achieve over the year to realise your full year objective.
Think about & record the specific behaviours that lead to a sale.
Identify the behaviours necessary to facilitate the cross sell of other products or services to your existing customers.
Calculate how many contacts you usually need to achieve a sale. i.e. how many telephone contacts does it usually take to get in front of a new prospect? (Measurement over a number of years suggests the average sales person will be successful in gaining an appointment approx. 33% of the time when making a cold call. It can be much higher on a given day, however on average, our experience suggests that over the longer term 33% is a realistic expectation).
Once you are in front of a prospect, what percentage usually covert to a sale?
Other thought starters:
Analyse your existing client base to identify those who provide the highest % of sales. What are the characteristics of your top 20% - their commonality? Consider where you might find customers with similar characteristics.
What are the normal steps that ultimately lead to a sale – How long is the sale cycle? What action could be taken to shorten the sales cycle?
Investigate if you have other clients not in the 20% but who have like characteristics – Ask what you need to do to move them into the top 20%?
Consider also the behaviours that are needed to gain referrals, warm leads, to other players in these groups.
Think about and record specific behaviours you could adopt that would increase customer loyalty.
Once you have identified the behaviours, the number of contacts needed to make a sale, the average $ sale, you can then set down weekly behaviours needed to achieve the financial outcomes you are seeking.
These could be:
The number of follow up service calls to existing clients each week to build customer loyalty.
The number of calls to clients to on-sell other products or services.
The number of calls to prospects.
The number of visits to existing clients.
The number of visits to prospects.
If appropriate, the number of referral requests you will make to existing satisfied clients.
Summary
Whilst the sales management approach outlined in this paper is relatively simple in terms of its concept – it is powerful in practice – but it requires absolute discipline to be effective! No one can be excluded, senior management included.
While the above process may seem daunting at first, it does work and is worth the effort involved. Importantly, once you have done it for a month, the process is simple, doesn’t take a lot of time & will produce results.
If your would like to learn more about how you could instil a winning Sales Management culture in your business – give the team at ClientEdge a call.