Dec 10 2008
What Constitutes A Successful Sales Team?
“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”
Description taken from The Wisdom of Teams (Harvard Business School Press, 1993).
For a sales team to remain consciously competent at optimum performance levels, they require frequent injections of stimulation, motivational guidance, prompting and directing, otherwise they can easily lapse into becoming unconsciously competent or worse, unconsciously incompetent.
The primary objective of an effective Sales Leader has to be to achieve consistently superior results through the performance of every sales person.
When thinking about your own sales force:
• Do you understand their motivators – what is driving them?
• Do you have visibility of their numbers – year to date, forecast vs. required performance?
• Activity levels – are they working hard and smart enough?
• Engagement – are they talking to the right level in their prospects/accounts?
• Messaging – are they capable of delivering an appropriate message at the right level?
• Qualification – are they only spending time on deals where they can compete and ultimately that they can win?
• Closing – are they constructing successful campaigns and closing business?
A successful sales team is one that is set up correctly, responds to the responsibility it has for the task, seeks constant improvement and sees its Sales Leader as a fundamental support to its success. A sales team in this situation will do well and is more likely to go on doing well than a sales team who are just told what to do.
The Sales Leader’s role is one of catalyst – constantly helping their team to keep up with events, to change in the light of events and to succeed because it is always configured for success.
Today’s News: I am delighted to announce the launch of Phase One of the new Resource Center, over at Top Sales Experts, which includes “The Best Sales Blogs In The World” – including this one! More than thirty of the world’s top sales gurus are taking part in this project. Do go over and have a look
We are now eagerly awaiting the arrival of Phase Two on January 13th next year.
Tomorrow: On The JF Guest Author Spot – Colleen Francis – be sure to join us.
Jonathan: umm, now just how could you talk about what makes a successful sales team and not once bring up the topic of money? At the end of the day the reason that so many sales teams are successful is that they share a single unifying focus: cash.
Sure, it sounds a bit crude, but at least they have a shared vision. Things start go off the track when team members lose that focus and start spending too much time looking internally. Things like job titles, bonus plans, SPIFs, etc. can lead to distraction which can disrupt team harmony.
I believe that, all your points being valid, the movie Jerry Maguire go it right: “Show me the money!”
- Dr. Jim Anderson
The Accidental Negotiator Blog
“Learn The Secrets of Side-By-Side Negotiating To Get The Most Value Out Of Every Negotiation”
Jim,
Got to strongly disagree!
The very best salespeople are not motivated by money at all, but they are motivated by achievement.
They understand that achievement brings with it appropriate rewards.
We also know that top performers are very competitive.
Best
JF
[...] Jonathan Farrington has a great quote that not only answers the question of what makes a good sales manager, but is also the foundation of the sales culture of any organization (emphasis mine): The Sales Leader’s role is one of catalyst – constantly helping their team to keep up with events, to change in the light of events and to succeed. . . [...]
I saw your quote because Derrick Moe at The Hire Sense noted it specifically:
“The Sales Leader’s role is one of catalyst – constantly helping their team to keep up with events, to change in the light of events and to succeed because it is always configured for success.”
I couldn’t agree more, and I agree with Derrick as he goes further:
“If you not only hold your sales manager but your organization accountable to this statement, you will allow your sales manager to react proactively to the revenue goals of the company.
The thing is, I see so little realization of this as I survey the sales scene. The sales departments are often the last to adopt Internet skills, strategies and resources – and now they are slow to adopt some of the savvier social networking approaches. And, when they do adopt them, they do it clumsily, forgetting everything they’ve learned about selling in person – and the online result is often just broadcasting to their network, “You should buy my stuff.”
I’m going to post Jonathan’s and Derrick’s quotes above my desk, along with the one from Steve Lishansky that says:
“The hardest people to work with are those who’ve been reasonably successful doing unsustainable things.”
Derrick & Michael,
Thanks very much for the feedback – it was very kind of you.
Oh, and Michael, your quote is so true – “The hardest people to work with are those who’ve been reasonably successful doing unsustainable things.”
The very worst though are those who have been successful despite of themselves!
Jonathan
Hi, I came across your site via google and I am hoping you can direct me.
My company (New) will be doing a JV with a Chinese manufacturing company and we have decided we will be incharge for setting up sales teams around the world.
Our product is new to the market and our budget is limited. Each sales team/company will be incharge of running themselves in their respective country.
Could you advise on a structure and qualities we should be adopting to achieve sales growth. How should we motivate them etc?
My understanding is that the more sales people we have the better chance we have to mass produce our product.
I suppose my main heading should read “HELP I need to set up a successful sales team worldwide”.
We have two areas for the same product a) LImited Edition Glassware & b) Mass produced glassware.
I hope you can point me in the correct direction.
Kind regards
Stephen Rayment