All Entries Tagged With: "Sales Management"

Developing High Performing Sales Teams: focus on the winners or weed out the failures?

We caught up with Howard Stevens after his keynote presentation that kicked-off our online-only conference last week. In his speech Howard offered some insight that many of us might find to be counter-intuitive. He said:

It feels logical to focus on the winners, but it is actually more successful when managers focus on weeding out the failures.”

We asked if Howard could elaborate and he followed-up with four main points to remember when you are evaluating your sales teams and considering your training and development options:

1. Someone who is an “average” professional salesperson…who usually makes quota, who almost always takes good care of customers, etc. will always make his company solid profits. There are quite a few of this kind of salesperson for you to choose from when building your sales team.
2. The superstars are rare. There aren’t enough to go around. Even the Yankees can’t buy enough of the superstars to fill every position. So it is more profitable to start today with a good solid performer that will make the company money, than to leave the business unsold while you are waiting to find the rare superstar.
3. Superstars are always at risk, they are more visible and attractive to the competition who just make them “an offer they can’t refuse.” If your superstar moves on they will take their training experience and even, potentially, some of their customers with them. For example, many of the top Las Vegas acts will not hire performers who are too talented because they are too hard to replace… as well as too expensive to maintain.

So, as you go through the process of evaluating, developing and maintaining your sales force, remember to focus on weeding out the lowest performing salespeople rather than constantly rewarding your superstars. Build an average team and you will do better overtime than if you constantly struggled to maintain a team of superstars.

If you’re looking for more insights on the critical steps to developing high performing sales teams, be sure to register for our online, on-demand conference available now through Wednesday, July 28.

Howard Stevens, founder, chairman and CEO of HR Chally Group, a talent management, leadership development, and sales improvement corporation providing personnel assessment and research services to more than 2, 500 customers in 35 countries  for over 33 years.

Embracing Diversity – Women.

POST a REPLY COMMENT at the END!

Your VOICE is the SALES TRAINING Industry!

Sales Training Drivers is proud to bring you quality content to help build World Class Sales Organizations (no matter how many employees you have) you are all World Class to us!

In the May 2010 issue of (T+D) Training and Development Magazine, an article written by ASTD correspondent writer, Aparna Nancherla, entitled “Career Pipeline Bears Pipe Dreams for Women”, was alarming at best and further builds a case for the need of higher quality coaching and diversity training for Managers (and that includes Sales Training Mangers).

What does that say about the HR / Training industry?

Aligning Sales Training ROI

Aligning the ROI Institute / Phillip’s  ROI Methodology to Sales Training

Dr. Jack Phillips of the ROI Institute created a 5 level ROI Analysis program that measures and evaluates the cost and impact of training after the training is delivered. We will spend several posts looking at this ROI Analysis Program to help you understand how your training and development action plans affect Human Performance Improvement and Financial Forecasting.

ROI Measurement in Training is the one of the most sought after metrics being demanded by business leadership – to ensure that training meets the business and financial needs of the company.

The Jack Phillips ROI Methodology is a comprehensive measurement and evaluation process that collects six types of measures:

1.  Reaction and Planned Action

2.  Learning and Confidence

3.  Application and Impact

4.  Return on Investment

5.  Intangible Measures

This balanced approach to measurement includes a technique to isolate the effects of the program, project or solution.

Please note: The ROI Institute will be presenting at the ASTD International Conference and Expo:

Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 8:00 a.m. – 9:15 a.m.

A Two panel discussions dedicated to measurement and evaluation.

Hosted by: Dr. Patti P. Phillips twitter.com/ppphillips

Aligning Sales Processes – The Total Picture

Aligning To Sales Processes

According to the book, World Class Selling: “New Sales Competencies”, aligning the Sales Process has several key actions:

1. Aligns and relates work to sales success – How work products contribute.
2. Incorporates selling sensibilities into work execution – How the customer is a partner.
3. Demonstrates a systemic understanding of sales – Relationship buying and selling.
4. Ensures that work helps to advance sales – Facilitating sales processes.

A well-defined sales process ensures focus on the right sales activities aligning how the customer buys.  A good visual would be a road map outlining the activities and steps that would be accomplished to ensure the probability of success in your sales role.

There are several areas of expertise that are involved when executing sales activities that lead the new customer to an intelligent buying decision with you.

Tangible Action Items

1. Strong Internal and External Marketing Support
2. Sales Training Education:  Product Knowledge, Industry Information, Competitive Strategy,
3. A good automated Customer Relationship Management System (CRM)
4. A defined lead generation system qualifying Inside and Outside prospect leads
5. A lead follow up system shared by Marketing and the Field Sales team
6. A sales person “scorecard” that prioritizes and measures activity performance
7. Prospecting Development outline
8. Prospect Closing Outline
9. A dashboard to show your current position in the sales process

ROI Analysis of your Sales Action Plan

1. Setting a goal oriented action plan that meets business results and executing the number of prospect sales calls to meet that goal.
2. Volume over Time Evaluation – lead volume, opportunity volume, pipeline volume and closed deals.
3. Conversion Rate Analysis – lead-to-qualified opportunity, opportunity-to-forecast, and forecast-to-close.
4. Value chain Analysis: cost per lead, cost per opportunity, cost per closed deal.
5. Compensation Analysis – Measuring transparent earned income over time based on individual / Team and Company performance.

Intangible Action Items

1. Understanding the difference between your sales role and your identity.
2. Owning responsibility for your actions
3. Mastering your sales Attitude / Behavior / Technique
4. Sales Behavioral Assessment: listening, effective questioning techniques, influence management, handling conflict, working with various personality types

Be a Leader of Change! Resistance is Futile.

Facilitating Change is a World Class Sales Competency that needs attention! This subject is so COMPLEX and CHAOTIC that it is very difficult to explain, manage or measure. As a Trainer, it is critical now for you to be able to understand how change affects your company and is reflected in your training. Let’s keep this SIMPLE!