Raising the bar for sales people, part 2

“Did I hire my sales people this way or did I hire them this way?”

In the last few months, we have learned how to set and communicate new standards and goals to the sales force. Now, we must understand and commit to follow-up and hold people accountable. To be sure, holding people consistently accountable is difficult because it requires the discipline of regular inspections and difficult conversations. It would be easy if the sales staff acted as promised, but this doesn’t happen for many reasons. While some of the obstacles that interfere with performance are personal, others are uncontrollable. However, you must encourage your sales people to perform to standards, regardless of the issues that interfere.

Your sales people will have different reactions to the new and higher standards, but they will know that the rules are changing. People will not be free to languish in mediocrity and be safe when not acting. Some will be nervous, others motivated and perhaps excited. But if you have the right people, they will appreciate that you are helping them define their future success.

The real challenge is to keep going. To do your job well, you must have fierce conversations with those who can’t or won’t sell. This new course of action will force you to let these people go and force those who cannot tolerate this environment to leave.

Once you have established and communicated the new standards, you will need to start collecting data to help you determine, in advance and in a real-time perspective, how your people are performing (sales activity) and how they will perform (pipeline and sales). results). The idea is to quickly catch them when they start to drift and have a meaningful dialogue about their current state and how it lives up to the standards they have committed to.

When preparing for a monthly or quarterly individual meeting, you must identify the position of your people in relation to their performance in terms of activity and results. You will classify them into one of the four categories below for meaningful discussion.

• Effort and results– The seller is doing all the necessary sales activities and getting sales results. Your training should sound like this. “You are doing well. Your activity and results are at or above your goal. Keep up the good work. Is there anything I can do to help you further?”

• Lacks effort and has results– The seller is falling short in sales activities, but the sales results are at / or exceeding their commitment. Your training should sound like this. “While your results today look good, we need to look at future results. To do that, we need to look at your success formula. If you have a 6-month sales cycle and you look at your activity 6 months ago, we see that you performed to put it. at your current level of success. However, looking at your current level of activity, it is only 85% of what your plan requires. Knowing this, what results can you predict 6 months from now? ” If you are reluctant to make the salesperson follow through, remind them that they agreed to be trained and held accountable.

• Lacks results and strives– The seller seems to be carrying out the required activity, but the results are insufficient. Something’s wrong, unless it’s a new hire. Review the seller’s success formula and check the closing rate, etc. There are two possibilities: 1. The salesperson is filling in the numbers (lying about the activities) or 2. The salesperson is underperforming. If the formula for success is accurate, you should have the following discussion. “Looking at your numbers, I can’t understand how you can exceed activity targets and yet fail in actual production. Either the numbers you enter are wrong or you’re doing a poor job of executing the sales process, skills, or techniques. Which? ” The rest of the conversation depends on how the salesperson answers this question, but it’s your job to guide him through the precision of the formula for success and have him project his true sales results for the year. Remind him that he agreed with certain numbers and agreed to be accountable. Looking ahead, inspect your activity on a daily basis.

• Lacks effort and lacks results– A salesperson who constantly lacks effort and results should not be part of your staff. Unless this person is a new hire, they should always be ABOVE or ABOVE the effort level of the sales activity. You must have the following difficult discussion. “This is what I expected from you and this is what I am getting. Are you the wrong person for this job? ” Typically, the salesperson will say “no” and make excuses, referring to the economy, competition, company policy, and so on. Your answer is “Those are excuses for lack of performance. We had this discussion 3 months ago and have been meeting weekly for the last four weeks. You are not producing. In thirty days I need someone in that chair to get these results. I hope it’s you But I assure you that someone will do this job with these expectations. “

After any of these discussions, you should ask the following: “Do you have any questions?” “Are you still committed to doing everything you can to be successful?” Y “Are you sure?”

Be sure to check with your Human Resources department to be fully prepared for managing people and how best to follow company protocol.

© ACTGLLC 2014