Sales and Sales Management Blog

December 15, 2010

3 Major Issues Facing Sales Management in 2011

Filed under: business,management,sales,Sales Management,small business — Paul McCord @ 2:01 pm
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Even as the economy slowly recovers sales managers will be dealing with some tough issues in the coming year.  Rather than getting easier, the improving economy may make managing the sales function even more difficult than it already is. 

 Here are three areas that sales managers are going to have to work through this year:

  1. Improving marketplace, limited budget.  Although the market may be improving, the sales budget will still be on life support.  How can you aggressively attack when you don’t have the resources you need?
    Time management will be key to turning up the heat on sales while dealing with limited resources.  First, cut out all extraneous activities and meaningless busy work for both your salespeople and yourself.  Concentrate completely on finding and connecting with quality prospects.  Sellers should be in the field, not in the office.  Meetings and reports should be held to a minimum. 
     

     

    Second, encourage salespeople to purge their pipeline of deadwood and to focus only on real prospects.  In a strengthening market you cannot afford to have your sales staff waste time and energy on non-prospects.
    Third, encourage your salespeople to revisit their clients and seek referrals.  Referrals are not only the most cost effective lead generation strategy, if your sellers learn how to ask for introductions to specific prospects that they know they want to connect with and that they know their client knows, referrals can become your central growth strategy in 2011. 
  2.  

    Pressure to Increase Margins.  As the marketplace improves, senior management will be demanding not only that sales increase, but that the profit margins on those sales increase also.Unfortunately, many of your competitors will be more than willing to cut margins to the bone just to land business.  Do you get into a price war just to get business or do you concentrate of high margin business? 

    The decision may not be as easy as it may seem since senior management will be demanding high margin and increased sales—in an atmosphere where price cutting is rampant by competitors.  It may seem that their demands are unrealistic—and the pressure to increase sales will be very, very real.  

    Do you go for sales or profitability? 

    Can you really do both? 

    Yes, you can.  In order to see an increase in both sales and margins you must concentrate on high quality prospects while offering them more value than your discounting competitors. 

    OK, that’s obvious.  So, how do you do that? 

    a)    Don’t just sell a solution; turn your solution into dollars in your client’s bottom-line.  Where most of your competitors will sell a solution to an issue, you must convert your solution into dollars—what is the bottom-line value of your solution to your client?  How much will it save or make for your client? 

    b)    As discussed above, concentrate on high quality prospects only.  If you want prospects who are seeking quality solutions, not cheap solutions, you must be highly discriminating in where you spend your time and effort.  Define in detail who your ideal prospect is and concentrate your time on finding and connecting with them rather than blasting away with a shotgun at anyone who breaths. 

  3. Working with Remoteand Semi-Remote Salespeople.  More companies are hiring sellers who either work remotely from home or only come into the office when necessary.  Developing and cultivating a relationship with these sellers has always been difficult for sales managers and that will only become more of an issue as the number of remote and semi-remote sellers increases. 

    Whether your sales team is housed in your office or is remote in whole or in part, coaching them is one of your primary responsibilities, and in order to do that you must understand their strengths and weaknesses, as well as how to work and communicate with them.   Unless you really understand where your sellers need help, you can’t maximize your coaching and managing efforts.  Rather than relying on your gut feelings or the salesperson’s personal analysis of their needs, employing a 360 degree assessment tool such as Halogen’s 360 feedback will not only save a great deal of time, but give far more useful and accurate information that will allow you to both strengthen your relationship with your sellers and to focus on the real coaching needs of each individual in your sales team.    As the economy continues to improve, companies will begin to add salespeople to their sales team.  Quickly determining these new seller’s strengths and needs will be even more critical as management will demand you get them up and productive as soon as possible, making assessment tools even more valuable and putting even more demands on your coaching time.   

 2011 will be a year of growth opportunities–but the very growth companies have hoped for will create demands on sales management that will be more crushing than they experienced during the business decline of the past three years.  For those managers who are prepared to address the upcoming issues, although it will be a difficult year, it can be a highly successful one.

November 22, 2010

The Bullshitization of Sales Coaching

Filed under: career development,Coaching,sales,Sales Management,selling,team development — Paul McCord @ 9:59 am
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Sales coaching is one of the key elements in turning knowing what to do into the actual behavior, the effective conversion of the knowledge into action.  The importance of sales coaching has come to the forefront in recent years thanks to a great extent to people such as my friend Keith Rosen.

Unfortunately, along with the rise of the recognition of the importance sales coaching and the accompanying increase in companies and individual sellers hiring professional coaches, comes the rise of those who want to make “easy” money off of those companies and sellers seeking coaching.  Today there are a growing number of “sales coaches” who have never been in sales or if they have, they have minimal experience.  There are also a number of websites offering “coaching” courses that claim that if you take their course, you too can enter the multi-billion dollar sales coaching industry and make a six figure income in just three to six months.

Selling is a complex activity.  To become a great salesperson means you have to acquire very specific skills; you have to develop a number of characteristics such as self-discipline, focus, curiosity, and a desire to solve problems; you have to have thick skin; you have to be able to overcome adversity.  Selling requires knowledge, skill, character, attitude, and action.  Becoming a top seller isn’t a journey of self-discovery; it is a journey of being taught, of being encouraged, of being corrected, of being pushed, pulled, prodded, and praised.

My friend Dave Brock is in the middle of publishing a great bog series on coaching.  I encourage you to start with his first post and read them all.  My intent here isn’t to duplicate Dave’s work.  Instead of talking in specifics about what sales coaching is and how to coach, I want to contrast what sales coaching in general is vs. what sales coaching isn’t, about the increasing numbers who are turning sales coaching into bullshit–the bullshitization of sales coaching.

I’ve been talking to Keith, Dave, and Jonathan Farrington a good deal recently about sales coaching and where it stands today.  And although we all have the same understanding and view of sales coaching, we each bring our own experiences to the table.  One common experience is noticing the explosion of unqualified “sales coaches” and the equally damaging coaching training courses that promise big money even for the most unqualified who complete their course.

I think Keith said it very well: “There’s the person who has been told and even trained by some of these coaching programs that, ‘You don’t need the answers or the experience to be a good coach.’ This is why you have a large population of unqualified people who think they can coach or simply change their title to ‘Coach.’ Conversely, there’s the coach who realizes you can’t take someone where you haven’t been before. This illustrates the importance of the coach to have not only the experience but is a walking and living model and example of what is possible for their clients to achieve.”

Sales coaching is not a Zen self-discovery experience.  Many coaches have been taught, as Keith points out, that they don’t have to know, all they have to do is ask until the client discovers their own personal answer.  Ask the right questions and sooner or later the seller will discover their own unique answer. 

The model of sales coach as Zen Master simply doesn’t work.  Again, I’ll defer to Keith’s description:

“Unfortunately, due to the lack of experience and subject matter of many coaches, they can only speak to the self actualization type of questions and because they’ve never sold before, or managed a team before, or sold successfully or sold in that person’s similar type of selling environment, they don’t even know the right type of questions to even ask. This sometimes leads to ‘killing the client/person with coaching’ as in, continually asking questions until they arrive at the solution themselves. However, sometimes as the coach, you need to provide the answer. Then, it’s the coach’s job to uncover the gap to determine what the right solution is rather than continually asking more questions. For example, if you have a salesperson who never cold called before, coaching isn’t the initial approach. This person needs to be trained in the core competencies and best practices first, in order to develop a baseline before you can refine their performance through coaching.”

The model I think most appropriate for sales coaching comes from sports coaching.  Think Mike Ditka.  For those old enough to remember Ditka as a coach, he didn’t take any crap off anyone.  Yet he was admired and respected by his players.  And he was an extremely effective coach.  Why? 

First, he cared about his player’s success.  Coaching wasn’t a paycheck, it was a passion.  Ditka’s success was tied to his player’s success.  He wanted them to succeed as much as he wanted to succeed himself.  For him to be successful his players had to be successful.  He had skin in the game.

Second, he cared enough to help them become fully prepared to face and conquer the challenges they were to face.  Can you image Ditka standing on the practice field helping a linebacker work through the process of self-actualization to discover for himself the proper techniques to shuck a blocker?  Of course not.  He knew when to guide and when to teach; when to ask discovery questions and when to tell. 

Ditka wasn’t interested in self-discovery; he was interested in instilling in his players the proper attitude, skills, and knowledge that would allow them to reach their goals.  He understood that football isn’t about becoming; it’s about being—being the best you can be.  It is about having and using the skills that lead to great performance. He had a very specific purpose—help his players become the best football players they could be.  If in the meantime, they had an enlightening self discovery, all the better—but not necessary. 

Third, he demanded performance.  Frankly, Ditka didn’t care if the player learned anything new about himself or had a feel good discovery; he cared that the player performed–and whether we like it or not, that’s the exact same demand that is put on every salesperson.  Every one of us is judged on our performance, not whether we have warm/fuzzy feelings about our work or whether we discovered anything new about ourselves that day.

A sales coach, like Ditka, must hold their client accountable and must demand performance.  Warm fuzzies are all well and good but they are meaningless in the sales world.  That’s not to say that a sales coach doesn’t know when to guide through questions or when to give praise and even warm fuzzy feelings.  She does.  But for her, those are far from the only tools at her disposal.  In Dave’s words, “The coach should set high standards and expectations, teach, motivate, challenge, correct, praise, correct, discipline, chastise, ask, tell, coerce, cajole, shame, and sometimes beat the crap out of the person being coached.”  Sounds a lot like Mike Ditka.

Fourth, he had been where they wanted to go.  Ditka knew how to help his players get to the top because he had been there himself.  He knew what it took.  He had paid the price.  He had invested the time and effort and sacrifice to be successful.  He didn’t ask his players to do anything he hadn’t done himself.  He had the experience and credentials to demonstrate that he knew what he was talking about.  He knew the game not just because he had studied it or read about someone else’s experience and learned a bit of lingo, he knew the game because he had invested his life in it.  He lived it.  He had real street cred.

There’s a great deal of bullshit in the sales coaching market today.  Everybody thinks they can be a sales coach because after all, it’s easy, right?  Print up some business cards; learn a bit of sales related jargon–metrics, win/win, customer centric, value added, consultative selling, pipeline, and such; write out a few “discovery” questions you can ask clients; and you’re in business.

If you’re thinking about acquiring a sales coach for your team—or for yourself—take a close look at your options.  Be careful.  The more visibility sales coaching gets, the more bullshitization will take place.  Yes, that former telemarketer who has taken a coaching course and printed a business card may be a whole lot cheaper than that known sales expert, but what you save in a coaching fee now, you’ll have to spend later to get real coaching. 

You need a coach, not a warm, fuzzy experience that leads nowhere.  You need someone who can get you where you want to go, not someone who has read a book or two and learned how to ask a couple of “deep” questions.  You need a Mike Ditka, not the latest pseudo Zen Master.

November 19, 2010

Guest Article: “Giving Salespeople a Titanium Spine to Protect Margins and Grow Profits,” by Rafe VanDenBerg

Filed under: sales,Sales Management,selling,technology — Paul McCord @ 10:53 am
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Giving Salespeople a Titanium Spine to Protect Margins and Grow Profits
By Rafe VanDenBerg

Here’s a ‘fun’ after-lunch exercise: Grab your nearest salesperson and dissect them on the spot. What do you think you’ll find under that polished exterior? What lies beneath all that confidence, training, and customer knowledge?

Salespeople need to be able to close the deal by not giving up too much in price negotiations. During the economic downturn, heightened fears and concerns over losing the deal or alienating the customer dominated the pricing process.  When fear sneaks into a salesperson’s pricing decisions, the result is very predictable: Margin dollars are left on the table that simply can’t be afforded to slip away.

So how do B2B companies guard against these behaviors that can cause so much damage? How can salespeople ensure they are going far enough to win the business without causing unwarranted damage to the bottom-line?

The first step is to openly discuss the fear-factor. Pull sales teams together and discuss the reality of the situation. Role play and use real-world scenarios and company-specific examples to go beyond the conceptual so daily behaviors and actions are recognized.

The next step is to address the issues in a more consistent and scalable way through a systemic solution. Pricing data can separate the facts from the fears. And technology can certainly make that pricing data more accessible and actionable. However, not all uses of pricing data and technology in a B2B environment are created equal.

A common practice is having pricing analysts “slice-and-dice” pricing data to identify pricing problems. Unfortunately, most of the problems found are with deals that have already been negotiated. At this point, it is too late. Looking in the rearview mirror can only show margin dollars that have already passed by.

Other B2B companies will attempt to push pricing data out to the salespeople to conduct all the necessary “slicing-and-dicing” and “data-whipping” to arrive with a better pricing decision. All the while a nice theory, it is just not a very practical, or realistic. Salespeople need to be spending time selling, not dabbling at being a pricing analyst.

Other B2B companies will attempt to push pricing data out to the salespeople. Under this model, individual salespeople are expected to conduct all the necessary “slicing-and-dicing” and “data-whipping” to arrive at a better pricing decision. All the while a nice theory, it is just not very practical, nor realistic. Salespeople need to be spending time selling, not dabbling at being an amateur pricing analyst.

The reality is salespeople don’t need more data. They need answers – answers that will help win the business without giving up more margin dollars than necessary. Furthermore, salespeople need these answers when they are doing the deal, not after the fact.

Visionary B2B companies are embracing a technology called price optimization to maximize revenues, while protecting their margins. They are using this technology to automatically analyze every deal in real-time, pinpoint optimal price-points for every product on every order, and ultimately win the business without going any further than they have to. Simply put, price optimization analyzes and interprets all pricing data, and then feeds the resulting answers in real-time, as the deal is actually being negotiated. Companies leveraging this technology have been known to improve margin dollars 15 percent and more.

For example, one Fortune 500 industrial manufacturer has watched their operating margins grow by 12.8 percent in the past year. Another Global 1000 manufacturer produced gains that exceeded their initial expectations and goals by 400 percent – generating $40 million of incremental margin and being recognized as the company’s “most impactful growth initiative of the year.”

Recent reports by industry analysts are also now reinforcing the value of price optimization in tough economic conditions. AMR Research states that, “establishing fact-based pricing, improving margin realization, and rectifying unprofitable pricing practices can help companies continue to be profitable during a downturn.1”

Gartner, Inc. notes price optimization as “having a more-direct impact on revenues or margins than any other CRM technology through 2010,2” and clarifies in another report why it is so compelling: “The price optimization and management market differs from most other applications because it offers strategic benefits (helping organizations grow revenue and margins) and operational efficiencies (helping companies save time and cut costs). 3”

Price optimization technology gives salespeople a titanium spine in negotiations. For every quote they’re putting together or for every deal they’re negotiating, salespeople can finally know – with scientific precision – exactly how far is “far enough” in that specific situation. Price optimization may not make a B2B company recession-proof, but it certainly can be a very powerful tool for driving revenues without sacrificing vital margin dollars.

Rafe VanDenBerg is Vice President of Pricing Excellence and Strategic Marketing at Zilliant, Inc., the leading provider of price optimization software based in Austin, Texas.   

1 Pricing Optimization in a Down Economy: Mandate for Growth or Ill-Timed Choice, Noha Tohamy, April 2008

2 Gartner MarketScope for Price Optimization and Management Technology, 2008 Michael Dunne, March 2008

3Gartner, Hype Cycle for CRM Sales, 2008, Michael Dunne, June 2008

November 10, 2010

Guest Article: “The Pain & Pleasure of Making Joint Calls,” by Brian Jeffrey

Filed under: Coaching,Sales Management,team development — Paul McCord @ 10:30 am
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The Pain & Pleasure of Making Joint Calls
By Brian Jeffrey  

If you really want to help your salespeople develop their selling skills while at the same time really annoying them, make joint calls with them.

I’m not suggesting you make joint calls just to annoy your salespeople. What I’m saying is that you will annoy them by making joint calls. That’s because most salespeople think they don’t have anything to learn and that you’re just going along on the call to find fault with their normally flawless performance.

Flawless though they may be, I don’t believe there is a salesperson alive that couldn’t benefit from having someone passing on impartial, constructive criticisms on how they can become even more flawless.

What Annoys
There are two major causes of annoyances. The first is the sales manager’s ego and the second is the sales manager’s lack of people skills.

The ego problem usually stems from the fact that many sales managers got to that position because they were good salespeople, sometimes a star salesperson, and they don’t want anyone to forget it. By the way, just because someone was an excellent salesperson doesn’t necessarily mean they become an excellent sales manager. I’ve seen a number of situations where the company has promoted their best salesperson into sales management only to lose their best salesperson and get their worst sales manager! Sales management requires a different set of skills in addition to being able to sell.

An inappropriate ego will cause two problems:

1. Because the sales manager fancies himself as one of the world’s greatest salespeople, he feels that no one can sell as well as he does and therefore every comment that comes out of his mouth is a critical one.

2. The second ego-triggered problem is the tendency to show off. This manifests itself in the sales manager taking over the sale at the first sign that things aren’t going as well as he wants them to go. Smart salespeople catch on to this fact real fast and make sure that they say or do something early in the call that triggers off the sales manager’s desire to take over the call. Now the focus is off the salesperson and all he has to do is sit back, relax, and let the sales manager handle the rest of the call. There will be little or no criticisms during the post-call critique as the salesperson didn’t really do anything.

I’ve seen major disasters when both the sales manager and the salesperson allow their egos to take over control of their logic and the situation. It becomes a clash of the Titans. The prospect quickly begins to realize that something odd is going on here as the ego’s clash and the two people start contradicting each other or get into a outright argument. Talk about a sales call going bad. No sales call should ever require a referee!

No People Skills
Some sales managers excel at the management part of the job and are less able at the leadership part. In other words, they’re more managers than they are leaders. It’s always been my opinion that you manage processes but you lead people. You lead people by understanding them, where they’re coming from, where they want to go, and then use that information to affect, rather than force, change.

Telling someone that they really screwed up the last sales call hardly has the desired effect of creating positive change. It may, however, have the effect of causing the salesperson to change jobs to a more pleasant working environment.

A better approach would be to ask the salesperson for her impressions of the call and to use your questioning skills to draw out what went badly and what needs to be done to avoid it happening in the future. Trust me on this, but most good salespeople will be harder on themselves that you can ever be. Of course, if you’ve got a prima donna whose ego interferes with her internal eyesight, then you may have to verbally whack her on the side of the head to get her attention. Most salespeople know when a sales call didn’t go as well as it should and after their shields are down, they’ll discuss it rationally.

Avoiding Problems
By this time I’m sure you’ve probably figured what to do or, more importantly, what not to do to avoid most of these problems, but here’s a few more ideas.

Remember, it’s the salesperson’s call, not yours. If the call is going bad, let it go. Use the call as a learning experience. Mind you, if you find that you’re having a lot of learning experiences with a particular salesperson, maybe you have a slow learner who should be given another career opportunity.

Makes notes during the call. Use these notes in your post-call critique. Focus on any positive points before embarking on the downside of your critique. Ask the salesperson what she felt went well and then ask what she felt she could have done better. If she covers all the points you wanted covered from your list, terminate the critique and move along to the next call. Resist the tendency to flog a dead horse.

If a sales call goes particularly well, take the time to compliment the salesperson before moving on to the next call. An occasional pat on the back can have a lot more impact than a kick in the butt.

If you want even more ideas on handling joint calls, read my article on How to Curbside Coach.

How Often
One of the major differences between a manager’s job and a sales manager’s job is that the sales manager shouldn’t spend all his time behind a desk or in meetings. Sales managers have to get out and “press the flesh” as the saying goes. They have to get out with their people, and I don’t mean out to the local pub at the end of the day. I mean out with your salespeople in front of real prospects.

I recommend that you put aside a half day per quarter to make joint calls with each of your people. That’s frequent enough to stay on top of any potential problems and not too frequent to really annoy anyone.

The pleasure part of making joint calls comes from seeing your coaching pay off with increased confidence on the part of your salespeople and even more closed sales that impact your bottom line.

But remember, you can’t have the pleasure without suffering the pain. So, why not get out and hurt a bit today? It can pay big dividends.

Brian Jeffrey, CSP, is a Certified Sales Professional with over 40 years experience in sales, sales management, training, and business consulting. Formerly co-founder and president of SalesForce Training & Consulting Inc, Brian and his business partner have started a new company, Salesforce Assessments Ltd. This new company works with sales managers who want to make the right hiring decisions and build a strong team using an online assessment.

November 4, 2010

Guest Article: “Questions to Lead By,” by Keith Rosen

Filed under: Leadership,management,motivation,Sales Management — Paul McCord @ 11:04 am
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Questions to Lead By
by Keith Rosen

Let your employees tell you how to motivate them

Motivating employees is often exhausting and time consuming work. Managers provide incentives, set goals, acknowledge top producers, even use consequences or threats. They use these tactics in an attempt to stimulate some level of interest in their staff, trying to push them into action.

Yet, when that external stimulation is no longer present, people have tendency to slip back into their old ways; not moving unless someone is there to push.

Although worn out from this exercise, business owners tell me they believe their primary role is “problem solver” to their employee’s challenges- a role probably learned from their predecessors and mentors. Many attempt to control their environment, working within the limits of what they already have. Some spend their time extinguishing fires. Others derive their energy by keeping certain challenges alive, providing them with some sense of purpose.

Perhaps the real issue is not tapping into what might drive employees to motivate themselves.

Seth Hallen, owner of Home Security Inc., discovered this. His 25-person staff had a tendency to deviate from company procedures that continually resulted in production delays. Deciding it was because they were unclear about their responsibilities, Hallen had his staff write up their own job descriptions and career goals.

The results were surprising. Telemarketers wanted flextime and opportunities for career growth. Salespeople cared more about job stability and receiving positive acknowledgment for good performance rather than commission. In response, Hallen adjusted the job descriptions and procedures, creating individualized incentive programs geared to each employee’s goals and strengths. He empowered his staff by seeing and acknowledging their natural abilities, while supporting their personal vision of what was important to them.

Hallen found this simple exercise made a dramatic difference in how his staff approaches their career. “There’s less friction or communication breakdowns. People are taking ownership of their responsibilities, providing a greater sense of accountability and direction,” Hallen says. “I also find they are much more responsive to changes in our company that support the corporate vision we can all be pulled towards, rather than pushed to achieve.”

Continually providing employees with solutions can train employees not to be accountable. It will likely result in the lackluster performance you are working so diligently to avoid. It creates an environment of dependency, preventing employees from sharpening problem solving skills or discovering their own solutions.

Today’s enlightened leaders instead are coaching, more than managing their staff. The difference is that you give strength or inspiration by uncovering what internally motivates them based on their beliefs and values, as opposed to stimulating interest externally based on your beliefs. Tapping into a person’s previously unused talents advances personal growth, challenging people to discover their best.

Coaching utilizes a process of inquiry which allows your staff to articulate what they want, then access their own energy to achieve it. Otherwise, you’re using your energy to get someone else in motion. To uncover each person’s internal drive, ask questions. Invest the time uncovering what is truly important to your staff in order to improve performance and align their efforts with the company’s vision and direction.

Here are some suggested questions:

  What do you want in your career that you don’t currently have?

  What do you want to be doing that you aren’t currently doing?

  What are you doing now that you don’t want to be doing?

  What areas do you want to strengthen, improve or develop?

  What is most important to you in your life/career? (What does a successful career/life look like?)

  What is the legacy you want to leave behind when you are gone?

  What are the three most important things you would like to accomplish right now?

  What is your action plan to achieve those goals?

  What do you need that’s missing which is preventing you from reaching those goals?

  How can I best support you to achieve these goals? (Uncover how each employee wants to be managed/supported.)

Invest the time asking your staff questions, listening for their responses and asking more questions as you uncover what they most want. Sure, you need the right answers to stay in business. However, to get ahead, you need the right questions. Allow questions to become the cornerstone for effortless leadership that generates long-term results.

Keith Rosen is fanatical about increasing your sales and helping you achieve what matters most to you. That’s why almost half of the Fortune 1000 Companies and the top companies in six major industries chose his training and coaching solutions. He is the Executive Sales Coach that top salespeople and managers call first to attract more prospects, close more sales and develop a team of top performers. Visit his website.

October 27, 2010

Squeezing Boils–A Disgusting Sales Management Post

Filed under: Leadership,management,sales,Sales Management,team development — Paul McCord @ 11:08 am
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A recent LinkedIn discussion reminded me of Ted, a sales manager I knew years ago, who mentioned a couple of times that he was dreading going into the office because he had to “go squeeze some boils.”  After his second or third time to mention his need to squeeze boils, I asked—more than a bit hesitantly—what he meant by having to squeeze boils.  He explained that he had some underperforming salespeople who he had to let go before they poisoned the rest of the sales team.  He had to drain the pus before it infected the rest of the body.

In some respects Ted had the right idea; he just wasn’t nuanced enough (my God, I sound like a  Democrat).  Ted treated all underperformers the same.  To him, an underperformer was an underperformer.  A loser.  A waste of human flesh.  If you weren’t performing up to his standards, you were a boil that had to be squeezed and drained out of the sales body. 

Ted understood that there are underperformers who can and will infect other sales team members.  His mistake was believing that all underperformers are the same and consequently they should all be treated the same—summarily get rid of them. 

The result of Ted’s one size fits all death penalty for being an underperformer was a sales team that feared him far more than they respected him.  It resulted in a sales region that was always short of team members–and short meeting quota.  And it resulted in an unhappy, unsatisfied, disgruntled manager.

The problem wasn’t that Ted sought to squeeze the boils and get rid of the poison before it could spread throughout the team.  The real problem was that he didn’t recognize that not all underperformers are boils.  Although all underperformers must be dealt with, not all are full of pus.

Over the years I’ve found that there are basically three kinds of underperformers:

Parasites: Parasites are those team members who are simply hangers on, sticking around because they’ve found something worth milking—salary, draw, benefits, whatever.  They have no intention of ever performing.  They may talk a good game.  They may use every trick they can think of to appear to be a contributing member of the sales team.  Bottom line is they’re going to take advantage of the ride as long as they possibly can—or until something better falls into their lap.

Destroyers:  Destroyers are the true pus filled boils Ted was fearful of.  Destroyers are usually, but not necessarily, underperformers.  You’ll find Destroyers bitching and moaning about how crappy a deal the company is giving the salespeople, how lousy the company’s products are, how unrealistic the sales quotas are, how the only reason that big producer always hits her numbers is because the manager gives her all the call-ins.  Destroyers intend to hurt the company.  They delight in destroying morale.  They find great pleasure in bringing another salesperson over to the Dark Side.

Slow Developers:  Slow Developers are as far removed from Parasites and Destroyers as you can get.  Slow Developers are sellers who have the potential and the desire to succeed but for whatever reason aren’t up to speed.  Maybe they lack the necessary skills such as listening, asking questions, or finding and connecting with quality prospects; maybe they need intensive individual coaching on how to apply what they’ve learned; or maybe they haven’t learned a reliable, effective sales process.  These are men and women who can become, and want to become, great producers but who need more time and attention to mature into the seller you want and need them to be.

Pus Filled Boils Will Kill Your Team
Ted was right to drain the pus from the sales team body.  One of the responsibilities of every manager is to protect the integrity of the company and the sales team. 

Parasites and Destroyers must be mercilessly eliminated immediately upon discovery.  There is no room in any organization for Parasites and Destroyers.  Mercy and compassion has no place in dealing with these men and women.  The idea that letting these folks go is in their best interests should play no role in the decision making.  Frankly, they’re not worth the concern, worry or loss of sleep.  They are sucking the blood from the team.  Why in the world would you lose sleep over letting someone go who is intentionally or even unintentionally destroying you?

In fact, if a manager allows any of these boils to stay that manager should be immediately fired; it is simply too serious, too damaging to the future of the company to allow the sales team to become poisoned, and if the manager won’t take care of his or her team, they are worse than the boils with which they refuse to deal.

Slow Developers Aren’t Boils
Treating Slow Developers in the same manner as Parasites and Destroyers is both morally wrong and a bad business decision.  I’m not saying that you cannot let a Slow Developer go.  You not only might have to let one go every once in awhile; I’m sure you will have to let some go.  But letting a Slow Developer go should be a last resort, not a first.

Obviously the first step in getting a Slow Developer up to speed is to figure out what’s missing.  Hopefully you’ve got a good idea already.  Enlisting the aid of a quality assessment tool would be a wise decision. 

After you’ve identified the area or areas that are keeping the Slow Developer from becoming a valued producer, sit down with him or her and work out a training/coaching/development action plan.  The plan should:

  • Have a realistic timeframe based on your sales cycle and the specific areas to be developed.  Too short a timeframe and you’re not giving the salesperson a realistic opportunity, too long a timeframe encourages a lax attitude and performance
  • The plan must be based on objective, measurable actions, not generalities or mushy goals.  Instead of a goal to “increase daily cold call dials,” put a definite number on it such as “make a minimum of 75 cold call dials per day.”  Instead of a goal of “increasing line items per order,” set a specific goal such as “average 8 line items per order.” 
  • Progress must be monitored with frequent review sessions and specific, measurable progress landmarks.  Reviews should be set frequently enough to make sure the salesperson is staying on track, as well as to identify problems and make necessary adjustments. 
  • The action plan must specify the specific training and/or coaching, as well as who is responsible for the training and coaching and when it will take place.  Leave nothing to chance or some iffy future scheduling.  On the other hand, use common sense when some part of the action plan needs to be changed or rescheduled.
  • The action plan must have a specific outcome:  either the salesperson has met the action plan goals or they will be separated from the company. 

Slow Developers can become some of your sales team’s most reliable producers if given the chance and help in developing their potential.  Although it takes a commitment of time and resources, it is cheaper to cultivate your Slow Developers than to hire a replacement and you have a moral responsibility to work with those salespeople you’ve hired who have the desire and potential to grow into quality producers.

Like Ted, you must drain the pus out of your team before it infects the entire body.  Unlike Ted, you have to recognize that not every underperforming salesperson is a boil on your sales team’s butt.  Unfortunately the most common problem companies have isn’t an overzealous Ted but rather a sales manager who takes the easy route and simply allows the boils to fester and the Slow Developers to fade away out the door—often out of sales completely.

Sales management is a proactive position that, along with its rewards, on occasion requires some hard decisions be made and some unpleasant actions to be taken.  Squeezing boils isn’t pleasant.  Working with your Slow Developers is hard work.  If you’re not willing to take on both, you don’t deserve to retain your job.  If you’re on top of both, you’re in an elite class of managers.  If you haven’t recognized the need to deal with your underperformers, take them on.  It won’t be fun or easy but you’ll shortly find your team’s morale and production increase and your team easier and more pleasant to manage.

October 21, 2010

Book Review: Turbulent Times Leadership For Sales Managers

Filed under: Book Reviews,management,Sales Management — Paul McCord @ 2:23 pm
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Author Tom Connellan contends that firstborns tend to be high performers—much more so than their later born siblings.  That success stems directly from their birth order as firstborns (and, of course, those who are the only child in a family) are treated differently by their parents. 

According to Connellan parents of firstborns have Positive Expectations of the firstborn.  “They are the ones who {expected} to become the all-star quarterback, the president of the senior class, the captain of the cheerleading squad,” he says.

In addition, parents give firstborns more Responsibility and Accountability.  Firstborns are not only given more responsibility, they’re given it at an earlier age than their peers.  In addition, their parents hold them more accountable for their actions and behaviors than their later born brothers and sisters.

Finally, argues Connellan, firstborns get more Feedback from their parents.  Their parents, friends and family give them more positive attention, more encouragement, and praise.

These three elements of raising the firstborn that are lacking in rearing of later born children are the major factors Connellan identifies as the catalysts of the success firstborns enjoy in far greater numbers than later children.

In Turbulent Times Leadership For Sales Managers: How The Very Best Boost Sales (Peak Performance Press:  2010), Connellan argues that adopting these three basic elements of success building and applying them to the members of the sales team by sales managers is the key to creating and maintaining top sales teams.

Turbulent Times Leadership For Sales Managers is a simple, short but highly practical book whose lessons can be applied immediately and with positive effect.  Although it can easily be read in a single sitting, application demands care and forethought. 

Connellan spends almost half of the book discussing the various types of feedback—he identifies three types: Motivational, Informational, and Developmental–and how to use them with a very strong emphasis on using positive feedback in its various forms rather than negative feedback (at least a 3 to 1 ratio, even more is better, he says).

The other two factors, expectations and responsibility/accountability are dealt with relatively quickly.

Although Connellan spends a great amount of time emphasizing the positive, the book isn’t an advocate of mushy, gloss over the negative management.  Part of the last chapter on how to put all three principles together is devoted to discussing the need to be tough, including setting tough goals.

Turbulent Times Leadership For Sales Managers focuses on the central issue of getting the best out of salespeople—changing their behavior.  Over and over again Connellan stresses that behavior change is what the three elements he focuses on are all about. 

If you have salespeople whose performance is lacking, pick up a copy of Turbulent Times Leadership For Sales Managers.  Better yet, pick up a copy for each of your sales managers—and then help them change their behavior so they can help their sales team members change their’s.

September 28, 2010

Are Your Sales Managers Sabotaging Your Sales Training?

Filed under: management,sales,Sales Management,Sales Process,sales training,selling — Paul McCord @ 12:48 pm
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Yesterday the CEO of a mid-size financial services company complained that no matter how carefully they designed their sales process and the accompanying training, they have been unsuccessful in establishing a consistent, long-term implementation of the process throughout the company.

Yesterday certainly wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this lament—and it certainly won’t be the last.

There are a number of possible reasons for sales training failure from treating sales training as an event instead of an ongoing behavior change process, to salespeople who view attending sales training sessions as torture, to the company’s failure to provide follow-up coaching for the sales team.  All of these are real issues that can negate any potential success you might experience from your investment in sales training.

But there is another cause of training failure that isn’t addressed as often but can be more destructive to your company’s training efforts than any other single factor—your sales managers.

Are your sales managers reassuring their charges that, “yes, you have to go to the training, but don’t worry; just go and when you get back, sell the way you’ve always sold?”  Maybe they don’t believe in the training you’re giving and are intentionally training their team in different processes and tactics? 

If you fail to get full buy-in from your sales management team to the specific training you are presenting, you will not have comprehensive and universal implementation of the training. 

Your frontline sales managers who work with their team members have more influence on how your salespeople sell than anyone else—more than senior executives, more than middle sales management, more than the training department, more than HR, more than the expensive sales trainers you hire.

If they don’t believe, the salespeople won’t believe.  If they don’t reinforce the messages, the strategies, and the tactics, those occasional training sessions will be nothing more than expensive exercises in futility.

How do you get all of your sales managers on the same page?

Before you ever put a salesperson in a training workshop or seminar, each and every manager must have gone through the management version of the training.  Each manager must understand what the company’s comprehensive, unified sales process is and how the particular training that is scheduled fits in the big picture; what short and long-term results are to be expected; what their job is in reinforcing and coaching the training; and what criteria will be used to determine the success or failure of the training.

Most of all, each manager must believe in the process and strategy.  .

Whether the training is presented by an in-house trainer or by a professional trainer brought in from outside, each segment of training should consist of a management segment designed to gain manager buy-in and to give them the tools and knowledge they will need to coach sellers once they are back at the office and a segment for salespeople that is attended by their managers.

And although the initial cost of training in terms of both time and money will increase, the long-term result will be reduced waste of training dollars and increased sales.  That wished for unified sales process will begin to become a reality because the biggest determent to success has been turned into the biggest promoter of success.

September 21, 2010

Prospecting Lessons from Some of the Biggest, Best Known Sales Training Companies in the World: They Won’t Like What We Can Learn From Them

Filed under: management,Sales Management,sales training — Paul McCord @ 2:31 pm
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“My name is Paul McCord and I’m a recovering sales trainer.”

OK, I’m not to that point yet, but if the prospecting calls and emails I’m getting from some of the biggest and “best” sales training companies in the world is an indication of the effectiveness of our industry, I may be repeating that line soon.

What is one of the most basic prospecting rules that every sales trainer, sales manager, and sales book preaches (even my dogs know this one by heart)?  Never make a prospecting call without having at least minimal knowledge of the suspect you’re calling–and preferably having done thorough research on them. 

I get prospecting calls and emails all the time.  Of course I know a great percentage of salespeople and business owners aren’t adhering to this rule.

But who else isn’t adhering to it?

Well, in the last month and a half I have received one prospecting phone call and two prospecting emails from salespeople for three of the biggest, baddest, most well known sales training companies in the world.  In all three instances the salespeople were trying to sell me—yep, sales training.

The salesperson that made the phone call started the call by giving me their name, the name of their company and then asking me if I’d heard of their company.  I gave a positive response.  Next I was asked if I or anyone else in my company made sales calls.  My response was again positive.  The salesperson then asked me if we were finding the economy tough.  My response was once more positive.  So, the salesperson asked me three questions that they knew I was probably going to give a positive response to, getting me on a “yes” roll.

The next question was a problem.  After a short explanation about what the salesperson’s company does, I was asked if I and any salespeople in my company had ever had formal sales training.  At this point I informed the salesperson that McCord Training was also in the sales training industry and that I probably wasn’t a great prospect for her and her company.

Her response?  She laughed, apologized for calling, and hung up.

The two emails were similar to the phone call.  The sellers gave me background on their company, gave me an idea of how their training could increase my company’s sales, and asked me to respond with a time for the salesperson to call me.  Conveniently I was given the choice of a couple of days and times or I could suggest a better time if I wanted.

These were not untrained salespeople.  These were not sellers who were hired by some rinky-dink fly-by-night company.

Not at all.

These were salespeople from three of the biggest sales training companies in the world.  All three are sales household names.  All three are among the 10 biggest sales training companies in the world.  Two are in the top five, maybe the top three.

These are supposed to be the best of the best, at least that’s what they tell prospects.

Embarrassing for them and their companies to say the least.  Embarrassing for all of us in the sales training industry as these sellers reflect on all of us when they make these stupid mistakes.

So what lessons can we learn from these top tier sales training companies?

  1. Don’t assume your salespeople are well trained.  If the salespeople of the “top” sales training companies aren’t well enough trained to not make the most basic prospecting mistakes, can you assume your salespeople are better trained and not making these mistakes?
  2. Don’t assume your salespeople are living their training.  Even if your salespeople have been thoroughly trained, don’t assume they are living it.
  3. How your salespeople sell reflects directly on your company.  These salespeople didn’t just embarrass themselves, they embarrassed their company—and not just because of the industry the company is in.  When your salespeople demonstrate ignorance, laziness, or any other negative trait, prospects draw the same conclusions about the company they represent.
  4. Once is not enough.  Your salespeople need consistent training reinforcement and follow-up.  A single training session isn’t going to change the behavior of your sales team.  Training must be on going.  It must be consistently reinforced and coached. 

Yes, all of this means you have to invest real time and real dollars in training your sales team—but you just got a free lesson from three of the world’s top sales training companies.

September 14, 2010

Making the Sales World a Little Smaller and a Lot More Valuable

Filed under: career development,Leadership,management,sales,Sales Management,Sales Resources,sales training,selling,team development — Paul McCord @ 8:12 am
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Sales 2.0 … Networking online … Standing out …  Crystal clear messaging … global business.  So many ways to reach out to prospects and clients and so many pitfalls.  So little time to assimilate the very best practices.

What’s a busy sales professional to do?

Glad you asked. Just this week a dynamic, exciting new (and free) international sales community launched. I’m participating in Top Sales World because it provides the very best support from people like me who are out to help busy people like you achieve greater selling results while deriving greater reward and satisfaction from your own efforts.

We all want to get better what we do. Top Sales World brings together top gurus in the United States and other countries who provide unparalleled information in the form of how-to-guides, one-on-one advice, webinars, articles and much more. Get help on a specific problem. Learn to focus on your goals on a daily basis. See the latest trends. Read about the latest Sales AllStar or Featured Contributor.

Top Sales World evolved from Top Sales Experts and incorporates regular webinars  on everything from “Sales 2.0 and Selling to Big Companies” to “How the Most Successful Companies Develop Their Sales Teams” to “Turn Your Connections into Cash” and “Elevator Speeches that Sing” and “The Dynamic Value Proposition.”

Each event gives you top information and tips you can put to use immediately. Download each presentation  from Top Sales World when it suits your timeframe.

Better yet, new, live webinars are taking place all the time.  On Sept. 16, join Wendy Weiss, the Queen of Cold Calling, for “Cold Calling 2010: What’s Working Today?” Dr. Tony Alessandra presents on “What Exactly is Collaborative Selling” on Sept. 21.  A panel of experts shares “How to Stride into the Final Quarter and Finish the Year Strongly” on Sept. 28.

What’s not to like? I strongly recommend you visit Top Sales World and see for yourself.

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