Selling Power Blog

Boost Your Situational Awareness to Win More Sales

Today’s post is contributed by Dr. Leff Bonney, vice president, research and product innovation at VantagePoint Performance, a leading global agile sales training company for sellers and frontline managers. Leff is also head of Florida State University Sales Institute.

 

We heard about a study where pilots went into a programmed simulation and were stopped halfway through without warning. After stopping, they were first asked things about their virtual flight, like altitude, speed, and enemy location. Then, they were asked about what they thought was going to happen next based on their experience to that point.

There were correct answers to these questions, because the simulation had been fully programmed, and the pilots had the training and knowledge necessary for appropriate anticipation and reaction. This research was testing the pilots’ ability to be situationally aware – because that skill is literally a matter of life and death. And, it got us thinking.

Many Factors Contribute to Salesperson Awareness

While deal viability and probability are not on par with national security or military safety, they do have enormous impact on organizational health. So, we wondered:

• What about salespeople and their situational awareness in client meetings – and what does that ultimately mean for deal outcomes?
• How would consistent performance affect this awareness?
• What impact would, or could, sales managers have on meeting awareness?
• Finally, is there anything else that contributes positively and/or negatively to reps’ consciousness in meetings?

Research from Florida State University found that high-performing salespeople are typically more alert in customer interactions, but that level of situational awareness often diminishes in reps who have recently been top performers – because they tend to become overly confident. It’s as if continued, consistent success numbs reps’ senses. That means ongoing management check-ins and coaching are critical for the situational awareness of all your reps – and not just those who are average or underperforming.

Speaking of coaching, we also found that management coaching styles influence all levels of salespeople. If your managers are very prescriptive in discussions prior to client meetings, our research shows that your salespeople will have lower situational awareness. This is because they will essentially be going through a mental checklist about what to do and when – and focusing less on what’s unfolding in the room. As a result, they will have lower awareness about what is actually happening in their meeting, which will impact their perception of how it is going.

But, if your managers take a collaborative approach with your reps, that helps the salespeople think through contingencies and possible alternatives – and increases situational awareness in the meeting itself.

Finally, interactive presentations (such as whiteboarding) increase situational awareness, while more scripted approaches (such as standard, “canned” decks) decrease situational awareness. Your managers need to develop and choose wisely because the types of content and presentation tools you provide, and the expectations you set for prep, will affect salesperson awareness in customer meetings.

Salespeople Need Strong Situational Awareness to Win

Just like fighter pilots, salespeople need to develop their situational awareness. Without it, they might fall victim to their own success, become overly dependent on pre-call coaching, or fumble their presentations. Therefore, it’s important to monitor your reps’ ongoing meeting outcomes, your managers’ involvement in prep and planning, and the resources your teams are using to execute.

Managing Sales in a Rapid Growth Environment

Today’s post is by Norman Behar, chairman and managing director of the Sales Readiness Group (SRG). He has over 25 years of senior sales management experience and is recognized as a thought leader in the sales training industry. His blog posts and white papers are frequently featured in leading sales enablement publications, including ATD, TrainingIndustry.com, and Selling Power.

 

Did you know a typical sales professional may rely on six or more cloud software applications (i.e., the sales stack) daily? Think of how many of the following you use all the time:

• Email (e.g., Outlook, Gmail)
• Business applications (e.g., Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• CRM (e.g., Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics)
• Sales engagement (e.g., Outreach, SalesLoft)
• Virtual meetings (e.g., Zoom, Skype, GoToMeeting)
• Team messaging (e.g., Slack, Chatter)

Most of us working in sales can’t function properly without many of these cloud software solutions. That’s why so many SaaS companies have sky-high valuations and aggressive growth rates to maintain them.

Managing Sales in a Rapid Growth Environment

In many cases, pre-IPO cloud software companies are held to ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) growth rates of over 100 percent; after going public, growth is expected to exceed 50 percent. Even the very largest cloud software companies (e.g., Salesforce, Workday, and LogMeIn – all of which have annual revenues in excess of $1 billion) are still expected to post double-digit sales growth.

These hyper-growth environments put extreme pressure on the sales organizations of SaaS companies in terms of hiring, onboarding, training, coaching, and managing sales teams. In addition, they typically have highly specialized sales roles that focus on specific business objectives. While the actual titles may vary, a typical SaaS company will have sales roles that include:

• Business Development Representative (BDR) – Identify and qualify new customers and/or opportunities
• Account Executive (AE) – Sell into qualified (or what are perceived to be qualified) opportunities
• Account Manager (AM) – Manage large or strategic account relationships with a focus on growth within the account
• Customer success manager (CSM) – Emphasis on renewals and upgrades
• Sales Engineer (SE) – Focus on aligning solutions with “use cases” (pre-sale) and implementation (post-sale)

While growing and developing talent is critical for each of the above-listed functions, the greatest challenge typically falls on the frontline sales managers. Managing sales in a high-growth environment can be particularly difficult because accelerated growth rates typically result in the promotion of top sales performers into sales management roles.

The Challenge with Promoting Top Sales Performers into Frontline Sales Managers

While top salespeople have instant credibility based on their sales success, they generally have little to no sales management experience and usually struggle with this transition.

The importance of frontline sales management was recently highlighted in an article in the The Wall Street Journal, “The Economy’s Last Best Hope: Superstar Middle Managers,” which cited a Gallup study noting the compelling positive impact quality management has on employee productivity and engagement.

When it comes to managing sales teams, it helps to keep in mind the quality of your manager will affect the following key functions:

• Hiring – always easier when you have the right people on your team
• Performance management - creating a culture of accountability around sales behaviors and results
• Pipeline management – opportunity management and forecast accuracy
• Sales coaching – personalized coaching to improve selling skills
• Sales leadership – maintaining a positive, highly-engaged team

How Frontline Sales Managers Can Transcend the Daily Grind

Unfortunately, the sheer number of priorities at cloud software companies often leaves sales managers trapped in a daily grind of focusing on urgent tasks, attending meetings, and submitting reports as opposed to training managers to unleash the full power of their sales teams.

The good news is that sales managers can learn to adopt excellent sales management skills and techniques. This is especially necessary at any company where managers are expected to deliver extremely ambitious sales results.

Managing sales in a rapid growth environment require a sales management training program that introduces the knowledge, skills, and tools new frontline managers need to be successful. Then, the organization can help new sales managers make the transition to becoming a high-performing sales manager much more rapidly and with better results.

Click the image below to read more on this topic in our white paper, “Developing Great Frontline Sales Managers.”

How to Align Sales and Customer Service to Drive Higher Revenue

Today’s post is by Anita Greenland, vice president of sales at The Brooks Group, where she brings 25+ years of customer service, sales, sales management, and sales training experience. Anita is responsible for leading and executing The Brooks Group’s sales growth strategy.

 

Excellent customer service translates into increased revenue for your organization. When your customers are happy, they’re more likely to stay with you, spend more, and refer your business to others.

Be sure you’re maximizing the benefits of happy customers by aligning your sales and customer service departments with these six tips.

1. Build a customer-focused culture.

Most customer service team members understand that their job is to help the customer by solving the problem or providing support.

Extend this customer focus to your sales team as well by encouraging a culture in which every interaction with a client has the goal of providing value.

Coach your salespeople to continue relationships with customers even after the sale has been made. They should reach out to ensure expectations were met, and schedule regular relationship, business, and strategy reviews.

2. Clearly define your promise to the customer.

Everyone in your organization should be crystal clear about what value your offerings provide your customers, and the promises you make to them in your marketing, sales, delivery, and service processes.

Too often, sales teams make promises that customer service reps can’t deliver on, or customer service representatives are unaware of the needs and demands that customers communicate to sales teams.

By clearly defining what you offer and how it benefits the customer, you help teams create a clear and unambiguous experience for each client.

3. Create open lines of communication.

Sales and customer service shouldn’t operate in silos.

Create open lines of communication and hold both service reps and salespeople accountable for sharing problems and challenges with each other, as well as knowledge and insights. Encourage team problem solving and reward collaborative behavior among departments.

When a customer has a problem, a well-trained service rep can often both solve the problem and guide the customer toward more products and services. It’s critical that your service reps are skilled at identifying untapped revenue opportunities and handing the customer over to sales when necessary. 

4. Identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities.

Customer service reps spend their time helping clients resolve issues, which provides the perfect chance to identify untapped revenue opportunities.

Coach your service reps to ask probing questions to truly understand the customer’s needs and what they value, and consider providing resources to help them map complementary options. They should be very comfortable with your product offerings and skilled at when and how to work in an upsell or cross-sell.

5. Make problem solving a team effort.

Successful customer service teams have the ability to defuse potential issues. Your team should be equipped to turn an otherwise negative situation into a chance to build customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Train your customer service reps to respond quickly and adapt their communication style to match the client they are dealing with. Then, be sure the issue is recorded and communicated with the client’s sales rep (and any other team members who may interact with the client).

It’s possible to recover and even benefit from a customer complaint. In fact, a study by Harvard Business Review found that customers who have a complaint handled in less than five minutes go on to spend more on future purchases.

The key is to have all hands on deck when an issue arises, and work as a team to deliver the best solution.

6. Invest in customer service training.

According to Marketing Metrics, the probability of selling to an existing happy customer is up to 14 times higher than the probability of selling to a new customer. However, a large majority of customer service departments lack the skills necessary to positively influence customers’ future buying decisions.

IMPACT for Customer Service is a training program that teaches your team how to serve and delight customers – and translate their efforts into additional revenue for your organization.  

Whether you’re looking to train a dedicated customer service team or would like to improve the effectiveness of any of your client-facing team members, this program can take your organization’s customer service from average to remarkable.

Learn more about the IMPACT for Customer Service program and request an info packet here.

It's Time for Sales Managers to Focus Beyond Numbers

Today's post is by Julie Thomas, president and CEO of ValueSelling Associates. She is a sought-after speaker, and author of ValueSelling: Driving Up Sales One Conversation at a Time.

 

Recently, The Indicator from Planet Money, an economics-focused podcast, gave one of its dubious Indicators of the Year awards to employee “ghosting,” in which people quit their jobs without any advance notice. Deemed the “tackiest trend” of 2018, the practice of workers just failing to show up one day is a symptom of a very tight labor market and, perhaps, mismanagement. After all, if someone feels valued, he or she is less likely to leave an employer – let alone in such grand, bridge-burning fashion.

Even if you are certain your sales team members won’t leave you in the lurch, every sales manager should be concerned about turnover and its potential impact on productivity and morale. Finding and onboarding new talent takes time and energy. Additionally, millennials (who now make up the workforce majority) generally value mentoring and skills growth more than previous generations.

That’s why every sales manager should be focused on retaining his or her top performers and grooming those with strong potential. Too often, however, today’s sales-team leaders remain fixated on making their numbers – without realizing those numbers might be easier to attain if they spent more time coaching.

Sales coaching isn’t as easy as it looks. Many reps who rise to management positions do so based on their own sales processes and business relationships. Coaching demands a different mindset: You must be passionate about helping someone else achieve their sales dreams. And you must do so in a way that works for them.

Where to start if coaching doesn’t come naturally?

Make sure all salespeople work from the same playbook

While individual sales practices and personalities vary, the basics and fundamentals of selling should be consistently applied throughout a team. Find a sales methodology everyone can follow. Ensure each rep has access to sales tools that assist their efforts.

Sales teams typically are a mixture of newer account executives eager for formal training and seasoned professionals needing to master newer technologies. Providing ongoing sales training and tune-ups makes it easier to motivate and monitor team members as they move through sales cycles.

Be the subject-matter expert for your team

To make sure you earn the respect of your team, you must stay in the know – which is not easy at the breakneck pace of change happening today. Find ways to keep up with what’s happening in your own company, territories, and industry so your team members know they can turn to you for expert advice. A big part of coaching involves learning how to collaborate with different personalities and work styles. This can be done more easily if you too are receiving professional coaching from someone fluent in sales and business communications.

Make your sales coaching measurable

Yes, there are the numbers we all chase each term. But there also are metrics used in coaching that help show whether your advice and counseling are getting traction. First, work with each rep to determine their strengths and weaknesses – and then how to overcome the latter. Often sales problems boil down to competence and confidence issues. By providing the right sales tools and training, you can help bolster someone’s ability to better communicate with prospects and upsell customers.

One reason sales managers don’t invest in their own coaching skills is time. They are too busy to learn how to better connect with their reps and enhance everyone’s ability to communicate value. That mindset, though, is short-term thinking at its worst. Invest the time to become a better coach – sooner rather than later. Your own long-term sales future may depend on it.

Three Amazing Productivity Tips for Your Remote Salespeople

Mike Schultz is the bestselling author of Rainmaking Conversations and Insight Selling, director of the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research, and president of RAIN Group, a global sales training and performance improvement company. He and RAIN Group have helped hundreds of thousands of salespeople, managers, and professionals in more than 73 countries transform their sales results and unleash their sales potential. Follow Mike on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.  

 

Sales managers face myriad challenges managing remote sales teams.

When seller and manager are in different places, though, one challenge stands above all else: ensuring sales productivity.

Seventy-one percent of companies don’t believe their sellers manage their time and days effectively. If you want your remote sales team to be productive, this has to change.

Here are three habits – from the Extreme Productivity System (XPS) – to help your remote sales team control its time, get in the zone to be highly productive, and achieve the best possible results.

Signal “Do Not Disturb” (and Let Sales Managers Know Why)

Just because you work alone doesn’t mean you don’t get interrupted all day. Perhaps nobody knocks on your door, but email, messaging, and phone distractions are incessant.

People are distracted every 11 minutes. Then, after a disruption, it takes an average of longer than 23 minutes to get back to task. All those emails and messages add up to a mountain of wasted time – preventing sellers from focusing.  

Sure, you need your team to be available for meetings. However, encourage them to signal “Do Not Disturb” when they’re concentrating on something important. This might mean they snooze their chat, turn off their phone, and close their email when they need to concentrate.  

As a sales manager, of course you need access to your sellers! That doesn’t mean they react instantly every time you (or anyone) pings them.  

Working on a big proposal? Prospecting all afternoon? If they are, encourage them with their technology (but, even more importantly, in their minds) to signal “Do Not Disturb” so they can focus.

People can wait. You can wait. Priorities can’t.

Get Your Remote Sales Team into the Zone

If you want your salespeople to maximize effort per work hour, encourage them to get in the zone.

The zone (also known as “flow”) is a mental state where an individual performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.

To get in the zone, sellers need to establish a daily routine of obsessed, planned sprints.

Sprinting is a form of timeboxing, a common technique in many project-management and software-development methods. Timeboxing allocates a specific period of time (or time box) to a pre-planned activity.

To start, encourage your sellers to work on a specific task for a minimum of 20 minutes using a visual timer (counting up). During this time, there’s no stopping, no distractions, and no task-switching – just intense focus on that one task. If something comes to mind in the middle of a sprint, have them write it down and revisit it later.

Once they’ve mastered sprinting, they can take it a step further and relay. A relay, just like a race, is four consecutive sprints, with short breaks in between.

Sprinting and relaying will be extremely powerful and effective for your team. It will train them to remain focused no matter how hard the distractions come at them.

Time sprinting is one of the most effective ways to boost productivity. Sales managers can help remote sellers block off time on their calendars to plan sprints around their most important sales activities – and hold sellers accountable for sprinting during that time.

Ignite Proactivity

According to RAIN Group’s research, extremely productive people are 2.7 times more likely than others to say they are proactive.

Proactivity can be a challenge – especially for remote sellers. It’s hard to get started on big, complex, or overwhelming tasks. Here are a few ideas to help ignite proactivity:

• It’s proven that people who commit to doing an activity on a certain day, at a specific time, and in a certain place are more likely to achieve their goal. Sales managers can help remote sellers be more proactive by encouraging them to add important activities to their calendar. Once the activity is on their calendar, they’re more likely to do it.
  
  
• Say, “3, 2, 1…Go” and just get started. You have only a few seconds to get started on something before your brain tells you it’s too hard. Don’t let your brain win. Dig in and get started.
  
  
• Encourage sellers to use positive self-talk. When you feel positive, you’re more likely to get started on important activities, push projects forward, and be proactive. Find out what self-talk is holding your sellers back (e.g., cold calling doesn’t work, our solutions are too expensive, we never win against this competitor, etc.) and help them change the statement to something positive (e.g., I have value to bring to this buyer, I can make a plan to beat this competitor, etc.).  

If you manage remote sellers and want them to exceed expectations – achieving great sales success – help them adopt these three habits. Those who do will be on their way to achieving their best results.

Placing the Right Salesperson in the Wrong Sales Role

Today’s post is by Tracey Wik, president and managing director of GrowthPlay’s talent and organization effectiveness practice.

 

 

One of the biggest mistakes I see in sales talent management is placing a good sales hire into a position that doesn’t fit the person’s skills or talents.

Nothing will squelch the fires of motivation more thoroughly than a poor job fit. Sellers become frustrated when they can’t successfully do the job they want to do. Research conducted by the Chally Group Worldwide (now part of GrowthPlay) demonstrates that as much as 65 percent of job dissatisfaction is a result of these job mismatches.

In addition, placing the right person in the wrong role will set up your company for a high price of unwanted turnover. In small amounts, turnover keeps the organization fresh with new talent and ideas. However, when turnover is higher or unwanted, the result quickly turns negative – costing the organization considerable time and money to hire and train new salespeople.

Why the Right Person Ends up in the Wrong Sales Role

There are two reasons the right person can end up in the wrong sales role. The first point of possible failure is the recruitment and selection process. The second is when organizations restructure and reassign existing sellers to new roles. Failure in either situation is caused by the same root problem – confusion of strengths and skillsets.

Different sales roles require different styles, skills, and strengths. There’s no more prevalent example than the core competencies needed to be a “hunter” versus a “farmer.” The hunter (what we refer to as a new business developer) is characterized by those who are motivated by new clients, opportunities, and challenges. These are the salespeople who move from deal to deal and always keep their eye on the next win. Successful new business developers are wired to always be networking. They are good at problem solving and they are comfortable taking risks.

Often contrasted with the hunter is the farmer (also known as the account manager). The account manager builds long-term loyalty and repeat business with clients. Successful account managers are able to be advocates for their customers. They are patient and persistent, good at managing their time, and possess strong interpersonal and teaming skills.

Let’s suppose you run a sales organization. Your top producers in new business development (NBD) generate $2 million each and your top producers in account management (AM) generate $3 million each. After looking at these numbers, your CEO decides to reassign the 20 top NBD producers to the AM group, hoping to increase overall revenue by 50 percent – from $40 million to $60 million.

However, according to our research, only two of the newly assigned sales professionals would become top producers in the AM group (generating $3 million each) while an additional six would become merely dependable producers generating around $1 million each. The other 12 would likely fail to make even $1 million, so let’s estimate them at half a million each. In this scenario, reassigning the top producers from an NBD role to an AM role in an attempt to increase sales from $40 million to $60 million could end up reducing sales from $40 million to $18 million.

What to Do When the Right Person Is in the Wrong Sales Role: Three Choices

If you recognize that you currently have the right person (or people) in the wrong sales role, you have three choices. 

1. Re-assign the person to a role that is a better match.

With this decision, you can leverage the seller’s talent by reassigning them to a role that complements the person’s strengths and skillset. The challenge here is that you’ll then have an empty position and need to find someone else with the right skillset for the old role.

2. Start over by actively seeking new talent and replacing the person in the position.

The downside to this choice is the time, energy, and money spent on rehiring for the position. If your company can afford the loss of these three limited resources, then this may be a good option.

3. Use assessment data and predictive talent analytics to restructure your whole sales force.

Wondering if you have multiple sellers in the wrong roles? A talent audit can provide you a viewpoint of the competencies of your entire sales team – along with predictions of each person’s capacity for different sales roles.

Never Put the Right Person in the Wrong Role Again

To ensure you put the right people in the right roles in the future, the best strategy is to look at your data and develop ideal profiles for each sales position. Assessment and performance data can help you determine the competencies you need for each of your sales roles. Actively use the right role profile each time you seek to fill a sales position. A structured interview process coupled with assessment data ensures the best chance at putting the right person in the right role.

Has Social Media Changed Sales Management? Not Really.

Today’s post is by Jason Jordan, a founding partner of Vantage Point Performance, a global sales management training and development firm focused on training sales reps and sales managers. Jason is a recognized thought leader in the domain of business-to-business sales and co-author of Cracking the Sales Management Code.

 

I sometimes do random things. Occasionally I’ll take my wife’s dog for a hike on the nearby mountain trails (which buys me goodwill with both the dog and wife). Now and then I’ll buy my daughter sushi from the gourmet deli (though she rarely eats it). I just bought a bunch of vintage t-shirts of 1980s rock bands (though I’m not sure where I can wear them). And, recently, I decided to investigate the impact of social media on sales management.

I awoke one morning with random, obsessive thoughts about social media. Actually, it was more of a random insecurity. At Vantage Point, we’ve spent the past decade trying to elevate the performance of frontline sales management. In all that time, I’d never really thought about social media’s influence on this role, even as “social selling” became a buzzword that I myself toss about (recall my penchant for random behavior). Had I somehow missed a meaningful innovation in sales management that was right in front of me? Had I not registered a change in management behavior because it wasn’t happening – or because I wasn’t paying attention?

That morning I decided to conduct some informal “research” into the issue. I searched our newsletter database and selected 5,000 sales managers…at random. I sent each of them a brief email asking only two questions:

1. Has social media had an impact on your role as a sales manager?
2. If so, how?

Informal as it was, my little research project served to greatly reduce my personal anxiety.

Foremost, a relatively low percentage of the sales managers even bothered to respond to my email – lower than we would expect for such a communication. To me this signaled that social media wasn’t an intensely hot topic for them; otherwise, it would have generated greater excitement.

More surprisingly, almost exactly half of the active respondents replied no to my first question. Given the pervasiveness of social media and its buzz in the sales blogosphere, I had been expecting to receive an avalanche of fervent yeses. Didn’t happen. Apparently, the wave of “social selling” has left most sales managers unaffected.

Then there was the half of the respondents who replied yes. In almost every case, the sales managers declared that social media had changed their role by enabling them to conduct research on their prospects, prepare for upcoming sales calls, stay up to date on customer news, or network to uncover new leads. In other words, social media had changed the way these sales managers sold, not the way they managed. Interesting.

The only legitimate sales management function that seemed to be improved by social media was recruiting and hiring new salespeople. For that purpose, social media is invaluable. LinkedIn is a free, real-time database of every salesperson in the world who has access to the Internet. Twitter and Instagram are windows into the personal lives (and indiscretions) of nearly as many people. For researching and recruiting your next team member, these are gifts of technology.

But only a small minority of managers cited this function – around 10 percent of the already small group of respondents. No one claimed that social media had made them a better sales coach. Or helped them build healthier sales pipelines. Or helped them create more accurate sales forecasts. Whatever you consider to be the central responsibilities of your sales management roles, social media appears to be a bit player in their lives.

In fairness to social media, I’ve seen several social media applications that could surely help with each of these legitimate management functions. And, as CRM and social media platforms become more integrated, emerging functionality will provide sales coaches with new insights into salesperson behaviors and performance. The social media story is still unfolding for sales managers, but we’re not there yet.

As it stands now, if your sales managers moonlight as sellers, then social media can help them manage their customer relationships more fully. But, if your sales managers actually manage, then social media is probably relegated to just a small corner of their desktops or mobile phones. My informal investigation revealed that its presence at the sales management level is tangential, and its impact to-date has been minimal – at least according to 5,000 random sales managers who received an unexpected email from me on a day I chose to do another random thing.

What Do Prospects Think When Salespeople Fail?

Today’s post is by Dave Kurlan – a 2012 inductee into the Sales & Marketing Hall of Fame, a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, and sales development expert. He is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group (named the top sales assessment tool for seven consecutive years) and Kurlan & Associates (a global sales consulting firm). He has written two books, including the bestseller Baseline Selling, and his blog – Understanding the Sales Force – was named the top sales and marketing blog for six consecutive years.

 

To the casual observer, salespeople don’t make mistakes, fail, or lose business. Instead, they see people who may or may not be knowledgeable, friendly, helpful, and kind.

When I listen to salespeople on recorded calls with prospects, in role plays, or when personally observing them sell, I hear nearly a mistake per minute! These mistakes include – but aren’t limited to – the 15 listed below:

1. Didn’t listen to a response and asked a new question instead
2. Asked a stupid or useless question
3. Rushed to the next milestone
4. Didn’t ask for explanations
5. Failed to keep an explanation simple
6. Question was too complex
7. Didn’t uncover a compelling reason to buy
8. Didn’t build value
9. Was afraid to talk about money
10. Didn’t learn about the competition
11. Didn’t nail down a budget
12. Bored the prospect with too much unnecessary information
13. Failed to identify, talk with, and/or engage the decision maker
14. Failed to recommend a needs- and cost-appropriate solution
15. Failed to build a relationship

That list is but a sprinkling of the things salespeople do incorrectly – and your prospects won’t notice any of them.

My son played in approximately 45 baseball games this summer, and I saw his teams make so many mistakes. However, the casual fan would have simply said, “They lost – what a shame.”  They didn’t recognize that the team failed to execute a run-down, a hit-and-run, or a suicide squeeze. They wouldn’t see that the pitcher failed to locate his pitches, that infielders didn’t charge the ball on slow grass, or that outfielders didn’t communicate with each other before fly balls dropped. They simply lost.

It’s the same with prospects. They don’t know why – they just know the outcome.

And, unlike baseball, where players get coached after mistakes and losses, salespeople go right back out there and repeat the same mistakes because most of them aren’t being coached or aren’t being coached effectively.

Objective Management Group (OMG) has data from the evaluations and assessments of nearly 1.8 million salespeople. The table below shows the percentage of salespeople and the various amounts of coaching they receive.

On Demand	41%
Quarterly	9%
Monthly	10%
Bi-weekly	6%
Weekly	16%
Multiple Times per Week	7%
Daily	3%
Never	12%

As you can see, 12 percent are never, ever coached while only 10 percent receive coaching more often than weekly. Also, 41 percent – almost half – get coached only if they ask for help.

Can you see the contrast? Ballplayers get coaching immediately after a mistake or a loss while most salespeople get coached only when they ask for it.

And sure – you can blame their sales managers. Only 8 percent are any good at coaching and only 18 percent are strong sales managers, so most of these pathetic statistics are the result of pathetic sales managers.

Can we place all the blame on the sales managers? Hell no! Salespeople are perfectly capable of taking responsibility, stepping up, and arranging for private sales coaching. It depends on their

• Awareness – do they know they could be much more effective?
• Desire – is it important enough?
• Commitment – are they willing to do what it takes?

Take it upon yourself to improve in any way you can. Read a book like Baseline Selling. Watch an online video like the one below on how salespeople who need to be liked struggle more than salespeople who don’t. Enroll in training or get a sales coach.

How Sales Pipeline Coaching Leads to Quota Achievement

Today’s post is by Michelle Vazzana, CEO and a founding partner at Vantage Point Performance, a leading global sales management training and development firm. She is co-author of Cracking the Sales Management Code: The Secrets to Measuring and Managing Sales Performance. Vazzana is also author of Crushing Quota: Proven Sales Coaching Tactics for Breakthrough Performance, due out in October 2018.

 

One of the most important things separating great managers from their less-successful peers is how they choose to spend their time with the salespeople they manage. Sounds a little obvious, doesn’t it?  

But it’s not just time spent; it’s time spent engaged in meaningful pipeline conversations.

Our two-year research efforts into the practices of high-performing sales teams showed a strong correlation between team performance and pipeline management. High-performing managers held dedicated meetings to talk in depth about early-stage deals. Could there be an easier, more obvious pathway to improved sales?

We received data from 512 sales managers across 12 industries around the world. The goal was to identify specific management practices that led to a higher percentage of sales reps at or above quota – with an emphasis on practices that led to higher participation across entire sales teams.

So, what’s a “high performing” manager? Those with 75 percent or more of their team members at or above quota the previous year. Forget about using revenue numbers to assess performance. We’ve seen too many instances where superstar salespeople skew revenue production upwards, masking the true performance of their sales managers. In fact, when we examined manager effectiveness using revenue attainment as the measure of success, the average managers (or middle 50 percent) were hovering just below quota. This seems like fairly good news until you dig a bit deeper.

The lowest performing managers and the average managers had the same percentage of their salespeople making quota. This means 75 percent of managers in our study had only 48 percent of their salespeople making quota. Contrast that with the top 25 percent of managers, who had 65 percent of their salespeople at quota. It’s only by examining the proportion of sellers on a given team making quota that a manager’s true effectiveness can be evaluated. The more salespeople at quota, the more effective the sales manager. Period.

Now that we’ve shown you the evidence behind the success resulting from pipeline coaching sessions, let’s look at three keys to make it work for your team.

1. The Magic Number is 3

Managers who spend about three hours per month in pipeline discussions with individual sellers produce 11 percent higher average revenues than managers who spend less than that number of hours per month per salesperson per month. There’s something magic about the three-hour point, so dive deep into individual opportunities during your allotted time.

2. Make a Commitment

Managers with great team results schedule appointments for their opportunity planning discussions, while low-performing managers are more likely to have ad hoc meetings. In addition, high-performing managers were significantly more likely to coach fewer opportunities – and coach these opportunities in more depth. Of course, all managers scrub pipeline data to create a forecast; however, the best managers then move beyond inspection into high-impact coaching conversations.

Here’s a real-life example. When Vantage Point began working with sales managers at a large global company, average close rates were 25 percent of forecasted revenue. Following our suggestions, managers began meeting with reps twice a month for focused discussions on early-stage deals and close rates climbed to 37 percent. Eighteen months later, close rates were at 54 percent. The takeaway?  The pipeline coaching conversations doubled the company’s close rates. With such a simple solution at hand for all, failure to institute this practice is tantamount to sales management malpractice!

3. Early-stage Deals

Our study required sales managers to indicate the typical position of deals in the pipeline that they typically coached. Low performers were far more likely to coach deals in the late stages, whereas a significantly larger percentage of high performers oriented their coaching to the early-stage deals. In addition, low performers were more likely to use scheduled time to update the forecast and clean the pipeline. High performers were more likely to use their scheduled time to develop the best strategies for opportunity pursuit.

Sellers working for high-performing managers spend their time pursuing only solid deals and, therefore, have higher close rates. How so? Top-flight managers closely examine the deals reps put into the pipeline. They ask challenging questions to make sure the deals are real – and discard those that are not. Conversely, low-performing managers appear to focus on the size of the pipeline rather than its quality. As a result, low-performing managers tend to have sellers with unhealthy pipelines – full of unwinnable deals.

When sales managers make this one simple change to their management approach – when they add scheduled, in-depth, one-on-one discussions about early-stage deals to their regular pipeline scrubs – team performance improves remarkably. What have you got to lose by trying this approach with your team?

This Is What Happens When You Don't Capture Sales Call Data

Today’s post is by Eric Esfahanian, chief revenue officer of Gryphon Networks.

 

 

Nowadays, a lack of meaningful visibility into reps’ daily phone calls is a plague affecting sales managers leading teams of all sizes.

According to research conducted by The Brevet Group, only 33 percent of organizations say their sales goals were met in the past two years. However, the research also found that the majority of relevant sales interactions still happen over the phone.

With that in mind, it’s clear the telephone is the richest source of intelligence into the behaviors of your reps and customers. And, if you can’t capture, measure, or manage data related to daily sales calls, you’re potentially missing major insights that could be leveraged to earn you thousands or even millions more in revenue.

This visibility gap between a rep’s call activities and revenue is due to a lack of ability to capture sales call data and rapidly interpret it in a targeted, contextual way. HubSpot reports 40 percent of sales teams are still using manual spreadsheets to track sales-activity data, and almost 30 percent of salespeople report spending more than an hour each day on data entry.

No wonder sales managers still tend to rely on old-fashioned gut instincts, hunches, and historic trends to inform their decision making.

Here’s the thing: Technology can now automate sales activity data into easy-to-understand, actionable insights. So why aren’t more managers using such solutions to guide and drive standards to improve performance?

Companies tend to forget that the sales call data produced by reps is company property. You’re either using it or wasting it. As Forbes has reported, 62 percent of CRM is estimated to become cloud-based by 2018. This means now is the perfect time for sales leaders to look to the cloud for device-agnostic telephony that simplifies, standardizes, and automates your capture of phone-based activity from your sales force – whether captive or independent.

Overlooking sales call data is like a farmer playing Fortnite for 11 months out of the year instead of nurturing and cultivating their crops to maximize output come harvest time in October. As crazy as that may sound, managers do it every day when they rely on pipeline management instead of measuring and optimizing daily sales call data.

Remember: If you can’t accurately measure your sales activity, you can’t interpret or improve it. And that’s kind of the purpose of a manager, after all.