The “Clogged” Funnel

A rep is meeting all of the stated activity goals, but deals just aren’t coming together. Plenty of meetings with prospects and a pipeline full of “deals,” but nothing is coming through.  The rep is getting very frustrated.  So is the boss.  Help is needed, what do you do? 

Clearly this rep has one or both of two main issues, “doing the wrong things” or “doing things the wrong way” and is in need of some skills development.  Before the proper skills can be taught or reinforced, the sales manager needs to assess the situation (skill gaps) more completely.   Most managers’ don’t have the time to go on every call to assess a problem, hand hold the rep, or simply don’t have a systematic way to find the specific issues causing the problem.  I have developed a quick, but systematic method for uncovering and addressing skills issues.  It starts by breaking the skills into two core areas; Time Management (doing the wrong things) and Selling Skills (doing things the wrong way).

Time Management (doing the wrong things)

1) Take an hour or so to work with the rep and create a detailed “week in the life” of the rep.  Find out how much time is spent doing various activities during each day across a week’s time span.  Typically, in a longer complex sale cycle, the heaviest time spent should be allocated to those activities relating to prospects in qualification and solution development stages.  Something like the following:

Prospecting – 15%

Qualifying – 30%

Solution Development – 40%

Closing – %15

In any case, the time allocated should be appropriate based on what is understood about high performers in the organization.

2) Next, dissect the pipeline and categorize the number of deals at each stage in the process.  There is a reason the term “funnel” is often thrown about; there should be a rather logical flow of many deals at the top (prospect) and few deals toward the bottom (ready to close).  Having too many deals at later stages can indicate that not enough time is being spent on Qualification and Solution Development, or can highlight a selling skills issue (read further).  If a time management issue is identified, I would have the rep develop a “time management goal” for each week and encourage tracking time against the goals.  Uncovering the issue and additional focus is usually enough to correct the situation.

Selling Skills (doing things the wrong way)

Assuming activity and time management is adequate, I would move to assessing selling skills.  I use a ‘score sheet’ I created to help assess skills gaps deeper in the sales cycle.  Then, I “score” the pipeline, deal by deal.  I ask lots of questions and review prospect correspondence on every active deal and a few recent wins and losses (pick the highest priority deals if there are too many to make it time efficient).  I break down the score sheet into three basic areas of assessment. 

-  Qualification

• Is the company well researched and understood
• Have the customer’s specific issues been identified
• Has the rep demonstrated the knowledge about the issues (presentations)
• Has the rep linked the company’s solution-set to those issues
• Is the prospect’s org chart, politics and decision making process well understood
• Has the rep earned access to power (decision makers)

-    Solution Development

• Is help of others in the organization being engaged when necessary to advance deals or construct the solution
• Are technical and implementation questions being adequately adressed (product knowledge)
• Is the rep proposing too early in the process
• Is the rep working to verify/obtain budget

-     Closing

• Are proposals well written and professional
• Do elements proposed and pricing meet the stated goals and budget
• Is the rep asking the actual decision makers for the decision
• Is the rep engaging ‘Procurement’ at appropriate times

Assuming this score sheet method of pipeline and skills assessment pointed to some specific issues, I would put a targeted skills development plan in place to address identified deficiencies (training, recommended reading, ‘ride alongs’, etc..).

If there are many issues identified at all stages and steps, I would probably put a specific 90 day action plan in place and start measuring progress against the plan weekly.  The rep must buy into the plan and be made aware that a failure to make progress would probably result in a lack of continued employment in the current position.

Happy Selling!

The “Sales Process” begins with prospecting, where does it end?

This question was posted in a discussion group recently.  I was initially, not interested in commenting until I read some of the responses such as “ It never ends. You should be able to built up a personal relationship with the customer.” or “A great relationship never ends. Value the relationship, not the transaction, you want that person’s friends, relatives and associates as customers.”

These are laudable and accurate statements.  Everyone should be aware of the high value of positive existing client relationships. 

However, I think it is dangerous to assume the the “Sales Process” has no end.  I will throw out my definition and build the argument from there.  A Sales Process is “the initiation, pursuit and closing of a unique opportunity to capture revenue at a specific point in time”.  One might pursue several distinct opportunities inside one account; pursue multiple opportunities in sequence or even add-on new sales once an initial deal has been consummated.  However, each should be viewed and executed with the goal of capturing an outcome (“Yes” or “No”).

Here is why:

1) In the absence of a unique process, with an identifiable outcome (close), it would be virtually impossible to accurately forecast revenue or create predictability.

2) Having a distinct end to the selling process executed provides information about customer buying behavior (analyze wins and losses).  This is predictive in future marketing and selling activities.  Basically, it makes effectiveness measurement easier, therefore more useful.

3) In the absence of a process with an identifiable outcome (end), it would be virtually impossible to bring the corporation’s limited resources to work efficiently on opportunities that have specific revenue attainment as the outcome.  In other words, if there is no “end” to a selling process, how will the company, or a sales person, know where to spend time and resources?

4) Each identified opportunity in any particular account is unique.  Each opportunity will have different stakeholders, different objectives, different evaluation processes and different time frames for conclusion.  The company should recognize each opportunity as a unique set of factors and outcomes and manage according to the specifics of that opportunity to maximize the chances of success.   

I look at the “Sales Process” executed for each opportunity as having a fairly distinct beginning, middle and end.  The end is identified by either a decision not to purchase OR a decision and action to purchase.  Within any particular account, a sales person might lose one opportunity, and win another completely independent from the other.

This is not to imply that there is not another, separate process of “Account” or “Relationship Management”  where  the focus should be on:

1) Fulfillment of service commitments/maximize client satisfaction

2) Retention of the relationship

3) Identify Opportunities to renew or sell additional products/services (finding a new opportunities to execute the “Sales Process” )

Whereas the Account Management process may have no identifiable end, I think it is important for organizations to recognize a beginning and end (close) to the “Sales Process” executed for each Opportunity. 

Happy Selling!

What is wrong with the telephone?

In a discussion on LinkedIn, a very seasoned “C’ level executive posed the question, “What is wrong with the telephone?  I can’t find good reps that want to pick up the phone and prospect any more.”  I have certainly had moments when I asked myself the same question, “where are the fearless hunters?” 

The fearless hunters are out there, we might just be asking the wrong question.  Let me explain:

First, the world of the buyer has changed.  Both the number of available solutions (vendors) and the complexity of those solutions has gone up dramatically.  Buyers are confused, time constrained, money constrained and have more internal processes to navigate than ever before.  The world of a buyer is complex, difficult and confusing.  I had one executive level buyer tell me that he felt like he was “covered in honey and got dropped into a killer bee hive”.  He didn’t know what to do first, get the honey off or swat the bees.  All of us “sales types” aren’t really like killer bees are we? and do killer bees like honey anyway?   Anyway…

Second, professional selling organizations have to adapt methods to address the changed influences on the buy side. Because the buyer is faced with so much complexity and confusion, they need hand holding to get through the buy/sell cycle.  Lots of attention, lots of information, lots of assurance.  Most selling organizations were slow to adopt true ’solution selling’ methods, and have been slow to recognize the necessary change in behavior to accommodate the buyer’s changed requirements.

Third, good sales people have NOT been as slow to adapt, they are much closer to the buy dynamics than management is.  They are spending more time and energy helping navigate buyers through the process.  This is good, right?  Well, yes and no.  The customer needs that level of interaction to get deals done.  The problem is, sales tends to spend the same amount of time on each and every prospect, regardless of the propensity to buy.  All this time spent, also reduces the amount of time available for prospecting.

Fourth, sales people that have the skills and talent to carefully, thoughtfully and successfully navigate the customer through the buy process, have a completely different skill set than the true “hunter”.  We all think we want ‘hunters’, however, the effectiveness of pure hunting has been eroding for quite some time (witness studies from CSO Insights pointing at poor sales effectiveness).  Hunters get in…but do they get through?

Due to the factors above, we are seeing a significant bifurcation of selling roles, with the early engagement being handled by marketing or inside sales and high value engagement and solution construction being handled by more solution focused sales people. I think this is a positive and necessary evolution.

Couple of reasons:

1) Outside sales reps are suffering from a severe lack of “task clarity”.  Today’s sales rep is asked to prospect, present, develop, negotiate and close each and every deal, in addition to activity reporting, forecasting, administration, relationship building, attend training, etc.  While the world of the buyer has gotten much more complex and confusing, so has the world of the professional sales rep.  We all know (or intuit) that task clarity is a key to high performance.  Wide receivers aren’t asked to make the kick off, make the tackle and then break loose for a long reception (sorry for the sports analogy).  They specialize.  Sales should too.

2) The necessary traits and skills to accomplish effective lead generation vs. sales development and closing are very different.  We would all love to hire an entire team of reps that is highly competent at both…but the probabilities are against it.

Last but not least; 

3) One of the tasks can be done more effectively, with more specialization, for less money.  Lead generation is simply a less expensive skill to hire.  A company can hire two quality lead generators and a seasoned account executive for similar money as hiring two seasoned account execs.  I would rather have two lead generators capturing and highly qualifying leads for one account exec, than two account execs with less than full pipelines.

Happy Selling!

Outsourced Lead Generation?

I have been on both sides of the outsourcing fence, having built lead generation teams internally and outsourced the job to outside service vendors; both with mixed results based on internal and external factors unique in each company and with each vendor.  Before conducting a more complete evaluation of outsourcing options, I would first consider four high level factors that could answer the question, “Should we even be thinking about outsourcing?”.

1) Core expertise – is your company excellent at generating leads for your offering? Some companies are simply not good at lead generation. Either the company doesn’t have the institutional knowledge or experience, or lacks the management oversight and tools to manage the program effectively. There are many firms with amazing experience and core competency in lead generation. I would suggest that if your company is not ‘excellent’ in this area, be open to an outsourcing option.

2) Cost – there are many case studies proving that task specialization (usually by outsourcing) provides cost savings (efficiencies) in the long run. However, there are usually heavy investments of time and money before the program can be turned over. In addition, effective outsourcing requires ongoing maintenance and management, costs that should not be ignored. If your company is focused on short term P&L results, outsourcing may be a tough sale. If the company is more focused on long term cost savings, outsourcing can be compelling with the understanding that cost savings take time to achieve.

3) Scale – this is a huge decision driver for me. A well executed outsourcing arrangement will provide the company with greater speed and much greater scale than setting up or expanding a program internally. If the company is doing lead generation internally today and the results are adequate, I would lean toward keeping the function internal (unless of course the cost savings are demonstrably compelling and the upfront investment can be absorbed).  If the company is looking to set up a new program, or expand an existing one, outsourcing will likely achieve greater scale, faster.

4) Flexibility – one of the challenges for running a program internally is the lack of flexibility in terms of the outlay and results. What happens when sales has too many leads? Or sales turnover has reduced capacity to follow up? What happens in dry months when the staff can’t generate enough leads to fill the pipe? Internal headcounts are not only expensive, but time consuming.  Most companies find it difficult to simply add or eliminate head counts to accommodate short term issues.  A good outsourcing arrangement should provide for at least some flexibility in the process allowing situational changes to be addressed rather seamlessly. In the absence of this flexibility, the outsourcing option looses some of the appeal.

Happy Selling!

Finding Excellent Lead Generators

Cold calling is surely losing effectiveness as a key strategy for lead generation.  It can, however, be a useful part of an overall lead generation program if thoughtfully executed by the right individuals.  In my experience, finding good lead generation staff comes down to three base characteristics: 

1) Assess call reluctance – find the bounds of discomfort.  Ask situational questions and assess the answers.  “Would you call a “C” level executive on a cell phone late on a Friday night to get a lead?”  “What would you do if an admin hung up on you?  Would you call the executive back directly?”  You are not trying to find staff that necessarily do these things, but trying to determine what makes them uncomfortable.  Good ones will demonstrate a high level of comfort with just about anything inside the realm of professional business behavior, but a willingness to push close to the line.  They should also demonstrate a high level of discomfort with unprofessional behavior. 

2) Assess the key motivation of the individual.  Good lead generating cold callers are typically motivated by progress toward a simple to identify goal (number of dials, number of contacts, number of leads, number of conversations, etc…).  Task clarity is critical here, they should be able to demonstrate a strong motivation toward identifiable progress/achievement and a strong ability to focus on the tasks that result in achievement.  Ask questions such as “What is the most rewarding aspect of lead generation?” or “How do you know when an inside sales rep is successful?”.  Answers indicating a focus on simple to achieve outcomes are typically indicative of good motivation for lead generators.  Answers focused on non-specific or high level outcomes are typically not the best. 

3) Ability to prepare and plan.  Aimless cold calling is not worth the time and money invested.  Targeted, well prepared cold calling can be.  I would be prepared with a few simulations.  Present different situations and ask how would that person penetrate the account.  Focus on the research they would do to prepare and script preparation skills.  Ask the candidate to come up with a script on the fly.

Happy Selling!

The “Assumptive Close”

For a few months after graduation from college (I graduated college in ‘91 in the middle of a recession), I cut my teeth in the sales world selling life insurance.  While life insurance sales professionals get a bad rap sometimes, it was a great learning ground for sales fundamentals.  Many of the selling techniques were “cheesy” and unprofessional, I have abandoned those.  However, some of the techniques learned were really quite professional and very effective.  One particularly effective technique is referred to as the “Assumptive Close”. 

In professional b-2-b selling, where multiple calls and meetings are required and multiple stakeholders are involved in the decision, the “close” is not just what happens at the end.  In fact, if the sales cycle is well managed, these types of sales “close” as a natural evolution of all of the steps that lead up to the final decision.  Closing happens at several, if not many, points during the cycle. 

A “close” is any call to take a next step toward the purchase of a solution.

You close on an agreement to meet, you close on a agreement to involve more stakeholders, you close on a technical evaluation.  Any call made to capture an agreement to take the next step is a form of a “close”. “Mr./Ms. Prospect, you mentioned during our first conversation that once I provided an overview of our capabilities, you would have to set up a meeting with the VP of Sales.  Now that I have provided you with the overview, can we set a meeting with the VP?” – THAT IS A FORM OF A CLOSE.  You are calling the prospect to “close” them on taking the next step.

Normally, I tell sales professionals to not assume anything!  I question everything and encourage reps to do the same.  However, in some cases, making assumptions during the selling cycle can advance you to the next step without having to push the prospect too hard or ‘hard close’ the prospect on taking the next step.

The premise of the technique is making an assumption that the prospect did not say ‘no’, so I must assume the ‘yes’ and move to the next step or the prospect told you certain things would happen, so they are.

Assume that the prospect is moving to the next step because it is a natural or stated continuation of the decision making process.  Assume that since the overview went well that we will be meeting with the VP of Sales.  Why?  Because the prospect told you so.  Assume that since the deadline for registration for the conference is tomorrow and the prospect hasn’t said no, I can send the PO.  Why? Because the prospect wants to be at the conference and the deadline is here.   The key is being professional and making assumption based on known facts, previous commitments or natural time constraints.  Making unfounded assumptions will get you in hot water, making natural well founded assumptions will advance the sale.

I expect many sales people will be uncomfortable with making such assumptions and taking this kind of action, but it is very effective and won’t get you the sort of negative reaction you might expect.  There are very powerful reasons this works.

1) Prospects don’t want to be hard closed.  The assumption eliminates this discomfort.

2) Prospects are time constrained.  They often don’t stop to return your calls or adequately consider your offer because they simply haven’t had time.  You have heard this many times!  Assumptions can highlight issues or time contraints the prospect has ignored.  They told you it would happen, believe them and take the next logical step, don’t make them tell you again.  They will often appreciate your help.

3) Prospects often times don’t have the courage to say ‘no’.  This can lead them to string you along to avoid telling you no.  The assumptive close will either get you to a faster no (which is always a time saver), or simply advance the deal without a formal ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Don’t be afraid to be bold with this technique!  As long as you maintain your professionalism, and don’t make wild unfounded assumptions, you will never have to be afraid of the consequences of your assumptions.  What is the worst thing that can happen?  You sent the PO at the registration deadline, the prospect calls you and says “I didn’t say we had a deal”.  Your reply?  “Oh, I am sorry, I assumed since you wanted to be at the conference, you wouldn’t want to miss the deadline so I sent the necessary paperwork.”  Prospect replies, “Oh, I haven’t been paying attention, I am glad you sent the PO, I will sign it right now.”  Or…worst case “Sorry, I didn’t get the budget, I can’t sign this.”

No harm, no foul.

Increasing Sales Effectiveness (bridge the gap between Sales and Marketing)

In a past post, I highlighted a tactical framework for increasing sales effectiveness (process, skills and tools).  In this post, I will address an operational method for improving sales performance by briding the gap between sales and marketing teams. 

Sales and Marketing teams are often at odds with one another.  This is not new insight.  Marketing organizations often work hard to generate leads for sales and are disappointed (to say the least) when sales doesn’t act on them. Sales has limited time in each day and many objectives to accomplish.  Often, sales complains of “lousy leads” and “wasted time” chasing the ghosts Marketing calls leads.

What is increasingly becoming evident is that when both teams work seamlessly sales effectiveness can be increased, sometimes dramatically. 

In 2007, Aberdeen stated “… as companies focus on ways to increase sales effectiveness, the mutual sharing of content and information between sales and marketing has emerged as a method to increase sales productivity.” 

Early this year, Aberdeen went on to say “…a trend has emerged indicating that companies that collect, centralize and effectively disseminate organizational knowledge have improved top-line sales results and concurrently reduced their operating costs.”

A simple to implement framework could provide organizations with some of the improvements highlighted, without a cultural revolution disrupting the two teams. 

Agree on a set of definitions.  I have seen frustration, apathy and downright dislike develop between sales and marketing teams simply due to a lack of agreement on certain definitions.  The VP of Sales and the VP of Marketing need to agree on a set of definitions that will at least get the two teams speaking some of the same language.

• A “target ” has been or will be actively marketed to, but has not responded with an indication of interest yet.  Marketing and Sales might both be actively working with each target to generate interest.
• A “lead” is an active indication of interest from a targeted company/person.  A lead might be generated by marketing, or by sales prospecting.
• A”qualified lead” should imply that based on the research, the character of the indication of interest, or a particular qualification process, the lead has been vetted and determined to be a valuable use of sales time. This is where sales and marketing teams often differ and end up at odds. Marketing works hard to get “leads” and deliver to sales, but sales often complains that the leads are “unqualified” and not a valuable use of time.

Agree on when sales “gets the hand off”.   In many small to medium organizations, there isn’t enough time or resource to have marketing qualify every lead completely.  Other times, marketing can pre-qualify and step further forward in the process and deliver highly qualified leads to sales.  Each organization is different in resources and capabilities to qualify.  Once the definitions have been established, The VP of Sales and the VP of Marketing need to agree on the role played in the qualification process, then, those agreements should be well stated to both teams and buy-in needs to be captured to support.   Know this; if leads are unqualified by marketing, sales will be mercenary in pursuit and only pay attention to those that are deemed worthy of the time spent (rightfully so).  Conversely, if marketing is able to thoroughly qualify leads, sales must be diligent at acting on them.

Relentlessly measure and share results.  You will not improve what you do not see.  Once the definitions and roles have been established, results and progress should be measured on a weekly basis and aggregated to provide accurate trend information over time.  Information is the most prescriptive tool a company has.  Teams will work more closely together and be more accountable when the company provides transparency.  If sales is not updating leads, make sure the update process is simple enough and the importance is well understood (implementing CRM in a later post).  If marketing is sending ‘hotmail’ addresses as qualified leads, provide a mechanism to identify and implement a simple filter.

Understand and develop buy process specific content.  I wrote about sales process in an earlier post.  Once an adequate process has been developed, marketing and sales should work together to identify the most critical information, knowledge and content needed to support the entire life cycle of a lead to close, by stage and step.  Both parties should share what has been developed, what is in high use and agree on common terminology for use – reuse.  Then, ownership of content should be assigned.  In my opinion, marketing and product marketing should own content.  Sales is just not as capable in this area.

Implement tools to share, collaborate and save time.  I posted on tools previously.  Specifically, there should be a set of tools which provide sales and marketing access to a common repository of corporate selling content (sales knowledge).  Specifically, the tool set should be designed:

• As a shared, common, accessible repository making it easy to find and extract the content needed to support the sale
• To provide two way communication.  Sales and Marketing should both be contributing
• To eliminate redundancy and duplicated work
• As a trusted source for relevant, up to date, accurate information

Bring in your “C” executive to help win the deal?

Time is the most valuable resource a “C” exec has, so it must be respected and used to the best benefit of the company.  Sales friendly executive teams can really help improve selling effectiveness through leadership, vision and strategic partnership.  Many times though, they can even help win deals.  Sometimes a CEO can simply help by adding strategic perspective to both sides of a deal, or help break sticky logjams in deals.  Often the CFO can help sales navigate past those “financial viability” questions that come up in some deals.  I have seen COO’s help address questions about execution.  Other times, the client or prospect account is simply desiring a higher level of engagement. 

In any case, if you have them…use them; but do so with the company’s best interest at heart and the specific objective in mind.  I have seen reps pull the CXO into deals just to provide greater presence, or to overcome selling weaknesses, but without the possiblity of advancement in the deal.  Nothing will lose the cooperation of your executive team like pulling them into meaningless meetings with clients or prospects just on the hope they will do your job for you.  Here’s how to do it right:

First, start by asking yourself, what are you trying to accomplish? “Howwill engaging our CXO help me win this deal?”  Usually, I am thinking of one of a few goals:

1) Earning higher level visibility in the client/prospect account.  You need access to power, and pulling in the CXO will earn you that access

2) Negotiating executive level items into a deal

3) Overcoming fear on the part of the client/prospect (usually dealing with financing, vision, future, execution capabilities, etc..)

4) Because your prospect/customer requests it, and feels it would advance the relationship and result in consumation of the deal

In addition to having an end in mind, I would be careful to engage “C” execs only on deals that are:

1) Well above average in terms of opportunity size and/or

2) Strategic or highly visible in nature and/or

3) Make/break at quarter end…would affect forecast revenue significantly

It works more often when you have an end in mind, and of course, when the “C” executive understands the goals and understands the issues involved.  Then, I would make sure (like in all meetings) that the parties are fully briefed on the situation, the opportunity and the goal for the meeting.

Happy Selling!

Increasing Sales Effectiveness (process, skills and tools)

Increasing sales effectiveness is central to growing revenue, scaling the business and increasing market share.   Improving overall sales effectiveness can be a complex undertaking with many possible paths to improvement; there is simply no single “right answer” for most selling organizations.  Further, in today’s “keep the head down and row harder” sales environments, and with capital stretched to the limits, I don’t imagine many Sales VP’s of small to medium sized companies getting excited about implementing expensive, year long programmatic changes to hopefully create hard to measure outcomes.  I believe in the current environment, speed and simplicity wins over accuracy and complexity.  Improvements should be implemented in “bite sized chunks” aimed at incremental improvement and methodical evolution rather than wholesale change and revolution. 

The good news is, there is a growing body of research into the various factors that lead to performance improvements.  Research that can be perscriptive for small and medium companies and can guide company leaders toward incremental imrovements in sales performance which can be implemented internally and without disrupting sales inertia. 

When implementing programs for improvement or change, I typically break the tasks down into three key areas, Tactical, Operational and Strategic.  In this post, I am focused on Tactical improvements and will post on Operational and Strategy in later posts. 

The three most critical tactical issues facing Sales Effectiveness are:

1) Process

2) Skills

3) Tools

Selling processes are the methods the company will use to find and retain profitable customer relationships.  Process is critical to scaling the business, sharing organizational best practices, duplicating successful behaviors and providing predictability to the business.  There are many well developed professional sales processes, most of which, if properly implemented and reinforced, would result in some productivity gains.  The biggest challenge for small and medium companies is the cost and effort involved.  Whether a company implements a third party developed process, or crafts one on “the fly”, it is important to align the process with the target customer’s buy process.  Start by mapping a ‘typical’ buying cycle from the customer’s perspecitve simply by breaking down the company’s last ten wins and last ten losses.  Determine the stages and steps each customer executed to make the final decision.  Then, examine the selling behaviors used at each stage and step to determine if some behaviors directly resulted in the win or loss.  The most productive behaviors identified should become the basis for your process and potential improvements.  The least productive behaviors should be de-emphasized or dropped if possible.  Again, the focus in on speed over accuracy, simplicity of complexity.  If a company can identify a few highly productive behaviors, the focus should shift toward eduction and enforcement of the most productive behaviors.

While processes are the methods used, skills are capabilities and the associated tactics used to navigate through the process.  Prospecting, qualification, solution development, proposing, negotiating and closing are some examples.  In my opinion, process is overvalued and skills are undervalued as a way in increase effectiveness.  Take a moment to think about it; a strong process poorly executed with limited skill will not likely yield much improvement, however, highly skilled reps often outperform even in the total absence of any process.  Usually, the best way to determine a team’s skill level and focus areas is to either test or survey the sales team.  First, identify a set of skills important to effective pursuit of the process.  Then, create either a set of questions (survey or test scenarios) to assess the individual (and team’s) level at each skill.  Categorize the results into three buckets: high performers, average performers and low performers.  Quickly, the skill level and specific skills commonly used by the high and average performers will become evident, those are the skills that should be developed in the team.

Tools (like CRM or Selling Content) should be used to: a) enforce or enable selling process b) increase efficiency (save time) and c) provide management with the data needed to run the business and make decisions.   Many “selling” tools have the management objective as top in the priority list.  I assert that if the tools implemented have the process enforcement and time savings at the top of the priority list, management will get better utilization and therefore better information.  When seeking gains in sales effectiveness, assess the tools implemented with a new view to the priority and focus on enabling and enforcing the process and the time savings.

Roller Coaster Rep

We have all either been this rep, or managed this rep.  Why do some reps perform at a very high level one quarter, and turn around and have such a poor quarter after that?  I have to assume that when a rep has the skills to make the number in half the quarters, something must be changing to cause the inconsistencies.  I have usually noticed one of the following:

1) Changing motivations – Steven may be hitting his overall target income with this hit and miss approach.  He might be making more than needed/wanted in one quarter, and then ease up the next.

Idea: I would examine re-working the comp package to lower the base, increase payout % and decrease accelerators (if any). Make sure the comp plan is geared for consistent performance.

2) Inconsistent new business generation – Often, reps will focus on filling the top of the pipe only when it is completely (or almost) empty. Especially in larger ticket complex selling environments, reps often have to change hats from “Hunter” to complex deal “Navigator”. When a rep gets over involved in a few complex deals, they tend to ignore building the top end of the pipe (prospecting).

Ideas: 

• Coach Rep to measure and keep a pipe sufficient to stabilize revenue (I have usually managed to 4x quarterly quota)
• Management should pay attention to his top line pipe coverage and re-enforce good habits here
• Coach rep to set aside one hour of every day for pure prospecting, even when buried in bigger deals
• Focus lead generation/marketing staff on the ”roller coaster rep” when pipeline coverage gets below 4x

3) Seasonality in the region. Many regions/territories experience seasonal fluctuation in buying cycles.  This can be seen in historical data in the region/territory.   Look back and determine if the last rep had the same issues in the same quarters.

Idea: Implement a few promotional strategies with incentives in normal down quarters in that region