There are two distinct levels of self-sufficiency in how sales people work:

Involvement 

This can be created in various ways such as: consultation, giving information, making it clear that suggestions are welcome, and that experiment and change in how things are done are good. This provides the opportunity to contribute beyond the base job. Sales meetings provide a regular platform to encourage ideas from the field and can help a Sales Leader to keep their ‘finger on the pulse’.

Empowerment

This adds the authority to be self-sufficient because you encourage your sales people to make their own decisions within clearly defined parameters. Empowerment creates a culture of involvement and gives it performance POWER because it embodies:

Participation towards sales strategy and approaches. Facilitating effective interaction in such as way as to ensure good problem solving, decision making and coordination of effort.

Open communication so that sales people have a clear understanding of what’s going on. Sales people will become de-motivated if they believe that there is something being hidden from them.

Feedback is a form of constructive communication, another necessary tool in the effective Sales Leader’s tool chest. Timely and appropriately delivered feedback can make the difference between a team that hides mistakes and a team that sees mistakes as opportunities.

Consistent and constructive communication throughout the sales team is essential. The act of constructive communication can do more than anything else to improve quality and productivity.

Willingness to ‘let go’ by the Sales Leader of all the decisions that could be made more quickly by sales people. Often sales people are closer to a situation giving them better insights to the best courses of action.

Enabling performance by allocating appropriate resources, for example computer-based pipeline reporting and sales information relevant to each sales person. Ensuring the sales team has adequate knowledge to accomplish its team targets.

This includes information relevant to the team’s goals and individual job competencies. In order to encourage this level of collaboration and interdependency, the Sales Leader must provide the necessary support and structure for the team, starting with putting together the right people.

Sales people should be selected and their roles assigned with their natural skills in mind. Not every sales person is capable of being a ‘Hunter’ and the skills for a ‘Farmer’ are different. The sales team must also have the resources and training required to develop the skills needed to do their jobs. This includes cross-training that gives sales people a greater awareness of how their jobs are interdependent, increasing the sales team’s flexibility and improving response time.

Results focused so that ultimately they are driven on what they achieve and are given a certain amount of freedom with how they achieve those results. An effective sales team has common goals that go beyond sales team targets. Each goal includes key measurable metrics (that are available to everyone on the team), which can be used to determine the sales team effectiveness and improvement.

Understanding and working toward these common goals as a unit is crucial to the team’s performance.

Today’s News: If you scroll down, you will find Saturday’s post by my guest Paul McCord, which generated some interesting feedback. It also, to a degree, ties in with an upcoming TSE Masterclass on Thursday:

B2B BUYERS: HOW NEW GENERATIONS ARE CHANGING THE WAY WE SELL
Thursday October 29th 2009 13:00:00

We are at an unprecedented time in the sales process with three generations of sales professionals selling to three generations of customers. As a result of these inherent generational differences, friction points or incongruent preferences exist between the sales professional and buyer.  Understanding your buyer’s needs, wants, goals, and preferences will help you improve your selling effectiveness and close more deals.
Dave Brookmire will share and discuss some of the key findings from a recently completed research study about how the different generations of customers prefer to participate in the sales process.

Learn about the implications for sales professionals for the different generations of your customers.

I will have some complimentary places for you later in the week

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