All Entries in the "Sales Competency" Category
Watch Out! Your Customer is Evaluating YOU!
Evaluating Customer Experiences
To discuss and deliver a training program on “Evaluating the Customer Experience”, expect that your audience will give you highly charged feedback that is vocal, interactive, and filled with very personal testimony – positive and negative. Why? Depending on the customer service outcome, in any given shopping experience, organizational and human behavioral psychology are forced into one place – revenue gain or loss at the expense of an emotional consumer.
How Can You Improve Sales?
The top 5 Issues Facing VPs of Sales
Every year millions of dollars are spent investigating and pursuing ways to grow sales. Any business owner knows that sales are the life blood of the company. If there are no sales there is no company, it is that simple!
A past study of 2,663 sales organizations by Think Training, Nightingale Conant, and Trainique uncovered five areas that shed light on what separates the best from the rest.
Issue one – A poorly defined sales process. 82% of all CEO’s said their sales organization had a process that was poorly defined or a process that wasn’t being followed. A sales process is like a road map. If you pay attention it helps you determine if you are in heading in the right or wrong direction. A well defined sales process does the same thing. It should be consultative in nature, have defined steps that allow both parties to develop a better understanding of each other and a set of questions that help you qualify or disqualify.
Issue two – Lack of essential skills. 42% of CEO’s said their salespeople lacked the essential basic skills needed to do their job properly-ouch. During the 70’s and 80’s it was common for large corporations to hire new sales recruits and put them through a 12- 18 month intensive sales development program. Those days are gone, leaving a huge skills gap! Odds are if you are younger then 40 you never received the type of training you really needed.
Issue three – Failing to focus on the right kinds of activity. 90% of CEO’s said their salespeople focused on low payoff activities or called on the wrong people. It is a common mistake to confuse being busy with being productive. Top performers know what they are doing, why they are doing it and whom they are doing it with.
Issue four – Allowing “self talk” to sabotage your efforts. 86% of CEO’s said their salespeople had negative thinking or self talk that was damaging their sales efforts. There are hundreds of examples but the most obvious has to do with discounts. Over and over again I hear salespeople say they have to be the lowest price to win the business. Every study I have ever read says that there are 4 – 6 other issues ahead of price but we have been “programmed” to think price is the issue. It is critical to understand how you have been programmed and how some of thoughts are working against you!
Issue five – Sales management not developing their people enough. 67% of CEO’s said that their sales managers were not spending enough time coaching and developing their salespeople. The job of a sales manager is to coach their people just like in professional sports! Unfortunately if we don’t have a sales process, salespeople with undeveloped skills or the wrong people coaching becomes impossible.
For salespeople taking responsibility for our own professional development is the key! Have a process, hone your skills, focus on the right kinds of activity, be aware of your thoughts, get some coaching, join a sales mastermind group, or join an association dedicated to your success.
Good sales professionals realize their strengths and weaknesses and create a plan that addresses their abilities. Great sales professionals repeat this process over and over.
Sales Compensation
Pay people according to your revenue strategy, not just based on revenue results
Do your long-term goals get sacrificed to make bonus in the short-term? Sales Compensation is one of the most important elements of developing a successful sales force. In order to retain the best sales force, your sales compensation plan must be competitive. Sales compensation plans have been shown to have an impact on salesperson turnover rates and activity levels. Typically, an experienced salesperson will be looking for the best sales compensation package and benefits. However, not all salespeople are “coin-operated”–and you probably don’t want them to be (especially if that behavior is detrimental to customers).
Think about it: The compensation of your sales force is a vital part of developing your sales force, whether you like it or not. But how often does your compensation line up with changing your sales force behavior to achieve your long-term revenue strategy?
If your business is serious about wanting to recruit an excellent, proven sales team with leadership capabilities, you might consider including the following items in your sales compensation structure.
- Percentage of salary (50 70%)
- Percentage of commission (30 50%)
- Bonus for individual performance
- Bonus for teams performance
- Monthly, quarterly, or annual incentives
Whatever you include in your sales compensation package, make sure it motivates your sales team to obtain the desired business outcomes. If your sales package is unbalanced, it could be non-supportive of the sales competencies you look for to drive performance.
After designing the right compensation structure, make sure you have a system in place that can track sales and commissions accurately. Review weekly reports and keep each sales person apprised of his or her individual goals if they are off track, or praise them for exceeding their revenue for that period. Encouragement and positive feedback go a long way.
When your company has a successful compensation package and excellent IT tools put into place for tracking revenue and meeting goals, everyone prospers.
Critical Factors
In developing your sales force, your company must consider critical factors to establish a system that is effective for your organization. This system must take your sales culture, sales process, and market into consideration. More importantly, your sales force development efforts should stay focused on helping each sales team member drive sales results. When adequately applied, your sales force development efforts should have tremendous impact on the overall accomplishment of the entire organization.
Have you tried sales competencies?
Help your sales team communicate
The link between communication and sales success
Most salespeople are good communicators and generally find it easy to put their thoughts into words. Typically, a salesperson is a good conversationalist and presenter. Salespeople must therefore be able to express thoughts, ideas, and plans effectively and when needed — persuasively. Because the volume of sales communication constantly increases, the chance of information overload with buyers also increases. Today, more and more salespeople are likely to leverage new and emerging technologies for communication.
Does your training adapt?
Communication considerations:
- How does the communication medium match the message?
- How effective are your sales team members at speaking, writing, presenting?
- Are all sales team members able to use the appropriate communication mediums (e.g., email, social networking, online presentation tools, voice mail, word processing software, PowerPoint)
- Are salespeople adequately aware of cultural and socio-economic subtleties in their particular sales territory?
