I first began to recognise the need to be able to benchmark sales performance more objectively and more rigorously over twenty five years ago. The motivation to do this was strong, because I knew I was wasting thousands,if not hundreds of thousands of pounds on sales skills training programmes which were not providing me with a proper return on my considerable investment. But I needed to prove my theory, because without an accurate analysis of my requirements, I would continue to abdicate that responsibility to the training providers, most of whom had only their own interests at heart.

So, with this quote from Drucker, “The most effective way to manage change is to create it” firmly in my mind, I set about my task – a task that became a journey, which began in 1981 and is still ongoing…

By taking an analytical approach, I arrived at the following equation:

Attitude + Skills + Process + Knowledge = Success

My initial reasoning was this: Attitude is fundamental to any achievement, because individuals with the right attitude are far more likely to embrace the essential Skills, recognise the control that Process brings and have the desire to continually expand their Knowledge.

Skills are the ‘tools of the trade’ and have to be developed on an ongoing basis. They also need to be specific, because too much time can be wasted over-burdening employees with inappropriate and irrelevant skills without any identifiable plan for their future requirements.

Process brings organisation, efficiency and control – both for the individual and for management. Effective process provides objective analysis and indicators, which can be benchmarked and accurately measured.

Then, there is of course a need to build in Knowledge – and that must include knowledge of products, industry, market sectors, competitors, business, own company and last but not least, self!

Attitude:
Let’s then begin by looking at Attitude. I was fortunate enough to have discovered the “Hertzberg Theory “- Professor Frederick Hertzberg has promoted a theory of motivation, which goes a long way forward from the original theory of “Carrot and Stick”, or indeed its extension ‘The Reward Theory’  still used by many managers and companies to try and exhort greater efforts from their staff.

It stems from two statements:

What makes people happy and motivated at work, is what they do.
What makes people unhappy and de-motivated at work, is the situation in which they do it.

Hertzberg suggested that managers needed to become familiar with three new letters that would become increasingly important in the management of people in the future. The three letters are……………..

You can download the FREE ebook here and continue reading.

Today’s News:A message from fellow Top Sales Expert, Kendra Lee:

Free Email PowerProspecting Teleseminar!

Get the latest email prospecting tips

Email is the #1 tool for prospecting – surpassing the phone according to a KLA Group survey of sellers. Yet it’s even easier to delete than a voicemail because you don’t have to skim it to make a decision.

So what’re you going to do to entice contacts into opening your prospecting emails?

Top IT seller, sales advisor and business owner Kendra Lee’s book Selling Against the Goal won a silver medal award from Sales Book Awards – a joint venture between The Sales Corporation & Sales Gravy - and she wants to celebrate with a FREE teleseminar to answer this question – just for you.

Come to this 1-hour teleseminar for fresh techniques that work without gimmicks and tricks:
 What never to say
 Enticing subject lines
 Lead-generating salutations and signatures
 Add your personal style and build instant rapport
 Sample emails
 Follow-up strategies that grab attention without hounding
 Ask your toughest questions on email prospecting

Join Kendra January 29 at 12:00pm Eastern.

Normally $79, this session is FREE to our first 75 readers who sign up. Just enter the coupon code “WIN”.

As an added bonus you’ll receive:

A session recording, handout, and copy of the Email Prospecting chapter from Selling Against the Goal, all included with your registration.

Remember: enter coupon code “WIN” to attend for FREE!

Tomorrow: Lee Salz is in the JF Guest Author hot-seat – “The Unprecedented Sales Management Challenge for 2009″

The role of a Sales Leader is to translate the organisation’s vision, mission and values into a meaningful context that sales teams can relate to and feel excited by. If this is achieved then the Sales Leader will have created a sales team with a shared mental model. This transforms an ordinary sales team into a high performing one.

For clarity, here is a brief description of the following terms:

An organisation’s vision is a guiding image of success formed in terms of a huge goal. It is a description in words that conjures up a picture of the organisation’s destination. A compelling vision will stretch expectations, aspirations, and performance. Without that powerful, attractive, valuable vision, why bother?

A mission statement communicates the essence of an organisation to its stakeholders and customers, and failure to clearly state and communicate an organisation’s mission can have harmful consequences around its purpose. As Lewis Caroll, through the words of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland says, “If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
 
Guiding principles are the consequence of a mission statement that are intended to inform or shape all subsequent decision-making, which also provides normative criteria allowing policy-makers to accept, reject or modify policy interventions and activities. They are a guiding set of ideas that are articulated, understood and supported by the organisation’s workforce.

Values are beliefs which the organisation’s workforce hold in common and endeavor to put into practice. The values guide their performance and the decisions that are taken. Ideally, an individual’s personal values will align with the spoken and unspoken values of the organisation. By developing a written statement of the values of the organisation, individuals have a chance to contribute to the articulation of these values, as well as to evaluate how well their personal values and motivation match those of the organisation.

The Human Capital Development Model, created by Krauthammer International, is a logical process that can take top management concepts, and translate them into a context that has real meaning for staff at all levels.

The key to bringing this model to life is to answer the following questions:
• Do my team understand the organisation’s vision and how their role moves the organisation closer to achieving it?
• How can my sales team translate the organisation’s mission into one that is relevant to them?
• How do the organisation’s guiding principles impact on the day-to-day responsibilities of sales people?
• Which of the organisation’s values does my sales team relate to?
• How can we interpret these values so they become compelling for each sales person?

An effective sales team understands the big picture and the context of their team’s work to the greatest degree possible. That includes understanding the relevance of their job and how it impacts the effectiveness of others and the overall team effort. Too often, sales people are asked to work on an activity without being told how their role contributes to organisation’s vision, much less how their efforts are impacting the ability of others to do their work. Understanding the organisation’s vision promotes collaboration, increases commitment and improves quality.

An effective team works collaboratively and with a keen awareness of interdependency. Collaboration and a solid sense of interdependency in a team will defuse blaming behaviour and stimulate opportunities for learning and improvement. Without this sense of interdependency in responsibility and reward, blaming behaviours can occur which will quickly erode team effectiveness and morale.

Today’s News: I mentioned yesterday that we have a really big week coming up and it all kicks-off tomorrow, with the announcement of this year’s twelve finalists, who will be battling it out for the “Top Sales Article Of The Year” award.

I should explain that the public poll will account for 50% of the marks and the other 50% comes from the panel of sales experts, who I will be introducing tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Tibor Shanto is my guest on The JF Guest Author Spot

“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.

As I mentioned yesterday, we are coming up to that time of year when we should be benchmarking our 2008 performance, conducting post-mortems and setting out our objectives for 2009. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be offering advice and providing guidelines.

I have always worked with the following formula:

Attitude + Skills + Process + Knowledge = Success

Therefore, when measuring my teams, I always ensure that I benchmark against that criteria:

A simplified example might look something like this (although I have to admit that my own companies’ measurement system is much more rigorous):

Personal

• Self-organisation & planning

• Motivation and attitude

• Ability to work under pressure

• Team playing and interpersonal skills

• Personal presentation

• Communication (oral/written/listening)

• Flexibility

• Initiative

• Performance vs. objectives

Sales

• Account management

• Business development

• Opportunity assessment -qualification

• Negotiation skills

• Presentation skills

• Strategic work

• Pro-activity

• Forecasting

• Achievement of targets

And for those with supervisory responsibilities you could add:

• Delegating authority

• Decision making

• Motivating – i.e. Creating enthusiasm and confidence

• Appraising and assessing

• Selecting and recruiting

• Coaching and developing

• Creativity

• Planning and allocating resource

• Representing

Next you need to implement a grading or scoring system – I use the following:

E – Poor: Definitely below acceptable standards; performance of job requirements is consistently deficient.

D – Fair: Improvement is needed to meet acceptable standards; performance of job requirements is inconsistent.

C – Average: Meets acceptable standards; performance of job requirements is consistent.

B – Good: Above acceptable standards; performance usually exceeds job requirements.

A – Excellent: Outstanding; unquestionably above acceptable standards; performance consistently exceeds job requirements.

In addition I translate these marks into scores, because that provides me with an overall numerical total which is so much easier to use when making comparisons:

I.e. using the above measurement scale: A=5, B=4 etc

In fact, I allow myself further “latitude” by using + or -, which in effect provides me with not five levels of rating but fifteen!

So now I have: E- = 0, E = 1, E+ = 2, all the way up to A+ which is now the equivalent of 14

This makes it so much easier to avoid the two common mistakes in rating i.e.:

Firstly, a tendency to rate nearly everyone as “average” on every characteristic instead of being more critical in judgement. The evaluator should use the ends of the scale as well as the middle.

Secondly, the “halo effect,” i.e. a tendency to rate the same individual “excellent” on every characteristic or “poor” on every characteristic based on the overall picture one has of the person being evaluated. However, each person has strong and weak points and these should be indicated on the rating scales.

What Else Should An Effective Appraisal Include? Mine Include All Of These:

Performance versus Commercial Targets

Specific Objectives vs. Results Summary

Quarterly Performance Rating

Commercial Targets For The Next Twelve Months

Specific Objectives For The Next Twelve Months

Performance versus Commercial Targets:

In this section, I review performance against all commercial targets for example:

• Revenue achieved.

• Overall gross margin.

• CCT (Customer contact time) as a % of TWT (Total working time).

• New accounts opened.

• Revenue increases from existing accounts.

Specific Objectives vs. Results Summary:

Specific objectives are all those targets that are “non – commercial” for example:

• Increase product knowledge in x areas.

• Profile any key accounts.

• Improve presentation skills.

• Attend a “Key Account Management” course.

• Become more involved with the induction of new recruits

Quarterly Performance Rating:

I have always believed in frequent reviews and as a consequence, I hold QBR (Quarterly Business Review) meetings at the end of each quarter. The scoring system is identical to the annual appraisal and in fact the QBRs provide most of the information and data for the annual session.

Commercial Targets and Specific Objectives for the Next Twelve Months:

A good appraisal should always conclude with agreement from both parties on the targets and objectives for the next twelve months. These do not have to be set in stone and can be reviewed at the next QBR; however it is essential that every individual buys in to what is expected of them.

Target setting is a vitally important part of a manager’s function because if targets are set too high that will only act as a demotivator: Equally, if they are set too low, typically that is all that will be achieved.

In the same way the high jumper just clears the bar and does not leap a metre over the top, salespeople sell to expectation and have no inclination to burst through targets – unless of course, there is a significant incentive on offer! Although that begs the question of why they were not challenged with a higher target in the first place?

Finally, it is important that the manager uses the occasion to send the apraisee away feeling good about themselves, fully motivated and believing that all of the targets that have been agreed are indeed achievable – a motivational summary works wonders, even if there were areas of concern during the meeting, always focus on the highlights.

Today’s News: What do you make of this?

“Improved Sales Opportunities

Marketing automation aswell helps ensure that sales and business departments are in accord about how to accomplish the adapted admission in sales. The software can accommodate tools, analysis -to-be leads and conduct alone business campaigns. According to architect and business adviser Jill Konrath, “The alone way to abduction the absorption of accumulated accommodation makers is to actualize a actual alone bulletin based on all-embracing analysis of their firm.”

You can aswell accumulate in blow with algid leads, which may accompany approaching sales if they balmy up. Lead-generation accoutrement advice ascertain advance backbone and forward those leads anon to your sales force, accretion the achievability of bound axis a advance into a sale.”

Yep, I agree and I passed it on to Jill yesterday, who was equally mortified. It seeems that we are all becoming victims of machine translation these days – this extract is taken from: http://www.usd8.com/how-business-automation-increases-leads/ - I am investigating!

To all of you who have e-mailed me to ask when and where you can register for the TSE “Roundtable” event on December 9th – “Selling Successfully In A Downturn Economy” I can confirm that full details will be posted here next Tuesday – December 2nd.

Tomorrow: On the JF Guest Author Spot – the ubiquitous Tim Wackell

In the book Emerson’s Essays, there is a section on “Law of Compensation”, which can be summarised simply as “give more, get more.”

This is what most salespeople try to do, so they end up working harder when they could be working smarter.

This begs the question, are your sales activities deciding your strategy or is your strategy deciding your sales activities?

Developing A Consultative Sales Process:

From the Sales Director’s perspective, developing a consultative sales process means developing a comprehensive, formal, realistic and step-by-step outline of what salespeople are expected to do. This is just as appropriate for internal and totally reactive sales teams as it is for external pro-active ones. This outline includes the activity and calls they must make, the relationships they should establish with prospects, the documentation they should use in sales calls, the issues they must discuss and resolve with prospects and the tangible goals they must achieve in sequence along the path to each sale, in order to achieve maximum effectiveness.

It’s only when such an outline is in place that sales management can be in a position to:

* Monitor the sales force’s activity, progress and results,

* Assess issues as they arise and take appropriate action,

* Redirect individual sales effort efficiently.

Although many organisations appreciate the importance of being customer-focused and talk in vague terms about their “consultative sales process”, surprisingly few sales leaders invest the time and energy required to develop a formal sales process – a process that is at once detailed and resilient enough to guide their salespeople and permit effective management of their efforts.

Overcoming Implementation Intertia:

Even when a consultative sales process has been developed, understood by sales managers, written down and circulated, it’s often not enough. No matter how brilliant, a sales process will only be effective to the extent it is followed and used by frontline sales staff. And this is where most organisations fall down: overcoming inertia – among managers and salespeople alike – and implementing the process.

The hurdles that must be cleared in order to get people throughout the organisation to actually implement it are enough to cause Sales Directors to tear their hair out. But a select few, of the very best, have found some innovative strategies that have enabled them to achieve the Holy Grail:

Sustained sales growth achieved efficiently, reliably and by design – is your organisation one of them?

Today’s News: At last!! My good friend and the author of the “2007 Top Sales Article Of The Year” Keith Rosen, is finally on the 2008 leader board - coming up on the rails again – you can catch his excellent piece here

We had some severe technical problems over the w/e: This site and JFC were taking up to two minutes to load, so we must have lost a lot of visitors – if you were one of them, please accept my sincere apologies, this is only the second time in three years that our ISP has let us down – oh, and the two JF Uncut posts were pretty good

Tomorrow: A very special guy, and possibly the most innovative member of the Top Sales Experts team

Special Announcement

Selling Through a Slump: Live Q&A on Selling in a Recession
2 p.m. EST November 19, 2008

These are tough times in the selling business. Customers are ordering less, postponing sold business, trimming the number of suppliers, and reducing budgets. It is taking longer to close a sale. Many of your sales staff may never have experienced a downturn like this before. How can sales organizations continue to thrive in an increasingly lean economy?

Tune in to a FREE live interactive discussion with a panel of sales experts, and get your questions answered:

What best practices can you learn from companies that have not only survived but thrived through past downturns?

What specific steps can you take to create a more valuable relationship with your customer?

Which tools should you be using to increase the effectiveness of your selling process?

What role can technology play in making you smarter about your best opportunities?

You’ll have an opportunity to gain valuable strategic knowledge by listening to commentary from proven thought leaders:

Learn what not to do.
Hear about effective methods that you can put in place now.
See the results of our TCC survey of top sales management experts, and learn how the recession is affecting other sales organizations.

Panelists will include Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, Denis Pombriant, founder of the Beagle Research Group, and David Bonnette, Group VP of North America Sales at Oracle. Robin Carey, Co-Founder and CEO of Social Media Today LLC, will moderate.

Brought to you by The Customer Collective and Oracle CRM.

This is an event you should NOT miss if you are serious about surviving and succeeding in the worst economic downturn in history: It is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

You have two choices; fight your way through it and come out at the other end stronger, wiser and intact; or do nothing and risk being taken down with it – for me, it really is a “no-brainer” -JF

Welcome to the conversation.

Now for today’s post:

A company’s performance appraisal process is critically important. It answers the two questions that every member of an organisation wants to know:

• What do you expect of me?

• How am I doing at meeting your expectations?

Regular assessments and appraisals are essential if individuals are to continually expand their “skills set” and should deliver three key benefits for an organisation:

• A clear career path for progression (which typically seems to motivate salespeople who operate in a business-to-business environment)

• Evidence of the return on investment made in developing people so organisations are encouraged to sustain ongoing development

• A clear benchmark for salespeople and sales managers, so that they know what is expected of them

Every manager has to appraise subordinates and the mechanics of it vary from ticking little boxes, through marking on five-point scales, to writing an open ended report. However, in all cases the primary purpose of an appraisal is to help the subordinate.

Why Appraise? – Reasons for an Appraisal:

• To provide feedback of individual performance.

• To plan for future promotions and successions.

• To assess training and development needs.

• To provide information for salary planning and special awards.

• To contribute to corporate career planning.

The five key elements of the performance appraisal are:

• Measurement – assessing performance against agreed targets and objectives.

• Feedback – providing information to the individual on their performance and progress.

• Positive reinforcement – emphasising what has been done well and making only constructive criticism about what might be improved.

• Exchange of views – a frank exchange of views about what has happened, how appraisees can improve their performance, the support they need from their managers to achieve this and their aspirations for their future career.

• Agreement – jointly coming to an understanding by all parties about what needs to be done to improve performance generally and overcome any issues raised in the course of the discussion.

So when considering the design of an appropriate sales team appraisal document, what are the areas you should consider including?

This will be very much a personal decision based on relevancy:

If you have read any of my work before, you will, in all probability, know that I work with a very simple formula when it comes to team development and measurement i.e.

Attitude + Skills + Process + Knowledge = Success

I arrived at this conclusion many years ago and my initial reasoning was this:

Attitude is fundamental to any achievement because individuals with the right Attitude are far more likely to embrace the essential Skills, recognise the control that Process brings and have the desire to continually expand their Knowledge.

Skills are the ‘tools of the trade’ and have to be developed on an ongoing basis. They also need to be specific, because too much time can be wasted over-burdening employees with inappropriate and irrelevant skills without any identifiable plan for their future requirements.

Process brings organisation, efficiency and control, both for the individual and for management. Effective process provides objective analysis and indicators which can be benchmarked and accurately measured.

Then there is of course a need to build in Knowledge and that must include knowledge of products, industry, market sectors, competitors, business, own company and last but not least, self!

Therefore, when measuring my teams, I always ensure that I benchmark against that criteria, plus I, and all of my clients, use ASP Profile

Today’s News: This is going to be a particularly hectic week, so do stay tuned if you can: First up, if you missed the “Ask The Experts” webinar that I co-presented with Jill Konrath and Kendra Lee for Landslide Technologies last week, you can download the entire show here

It was incredibly well attended and as we begin planning for the first Top Sales Experts Roundtable on December 9th, featuring: Leslie Buterin, Colleen Francis, Jill Konrath, Paul McCord, Keith Rosen and me – we just know that this inaugral event is going to be fantastic – more details soon.

Over at Top 10 Sales Articles, we have a very special winner this week – you can check them out for yourself here

And over on my other blog “Sales Manager’s Mentor Blog” – I ask: “Are You A Boss Or A Leader?”

Lots of very good webinars coming up this week on Business Expert Webinars, and I’ll be announcing those tomorrow.

Tomorrow: News of a special book launch.

Most sales leaders will not have experienced such a severe economic downturn before.

My advice is quite simple: “Stay focused, constantly challenge paradigms, but always keep the overall sales strategy sharply in focus”

One of the key tasks of a sales manager is to continually seek ways to improve the way in which their team operates – constantly challenging paradigms and questioning “the way we do things around here”, will ensure the team remains at optimum performance levels.

However, it is also important to stay within an overall long term strategy and not effect change for change’s sake. Here are some thoughts on moving forward in a structured manner.

First, keep the key management functions in mind:

• Define objectives (your own and others)

• Plan (and time) action

• Communicate (throughout the process)

• Support others’ action

• Evaluate performance (and link to the future)

• Then relate this to the task, the team and the individual people

Keeping the Overall Management Process in Mind:

Define Objectives:

• Task – Identify task and constraints

• Team – Set targets and involve the team

• Individual Needs – Agree targets and responsibilities

Plan:

• Task – Establish priorities

• Team – Structure and delegate

• Individual Needs – Assess skills, train and delegate

Communicate:

• Task -  Brief and check understanding

• Team – Consult, obtain feedback

• Individual Needs – Listen, advise and enthuse

Support/Control:

• Task – Monitor progress, check standards

• Team – Co-ordinate, reconcile conflict

• Individual Needs – Recognise, encourage and counsel

Evaluate:

• Task – Review, re-plan and summarise

• Team – Reward success, learn from failure (and success)

• Individual Needs – Appraise, guide and train for the future

This view encapsulates, and simplifies, the whole process.

With this picture in mind certain key issues are worth a mention:

Link to the Future:

Ongoing success as a manager is influenced by:

• The attitude you take to the transition

• What you do before you move into a new appointment

• The early focus you bring to bear on key issues

• The relationship you thus cultivate with staff

• The working habits you create for yourself (and others) in process

Together, all the above influence early success in the job – and how you take things forward into the future.

Key Issues:

From the beginning, always operate on the basis that managing people:

• Takes time – you cannot get so bound up in your own workload that you skimp on time you should spend with others

• Takes effort – it is challenge, there are no magic formulae or quick fixes that will do the job for you

• Needs thought – the obvious or immediate answer may not be best, things may well need research, analysis and thinking through

• Is not a solo effort – seek and take advice from where you can, including your own staff

• Will not always go right – as Oscar Wilde said, “Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes”: admit your mistakes (publicity if necessary) and learn from your experience

Remember too that managing people:

Is a process of helping others to be self-sufficient – this implies trust and that management works best when you take a positive view of what people can do (and do not see your role as a sort of corporate security guard)

Is based on good, regular and open communication – something that pervades many issues.

Needs to be acceptable to people before it can be effective– hence the crucial role of motivation as part of the management task

Become self-sustaining when it works – i.e. if people find your management helpful (to the job, the organisation and to them) then they will support it and support you

Overall, management is not what you do to people but the process of how you work with people to help prompt their performance. Work with people from day one, and go on doing it throughout your management career.

At the end of the day success comes down to a considered approach. Charge in, desperate to make an impression, go at everything at once in order to make an impression, and disaster may closely follow. ‘Twas ever thus:

“First organise the near at hand, then organise the far removed.

First organise the inner, then organise the outer.

First organise the basic, then organise the derivative

First organise the strong, then organise the weak.

First organise the great. Then organise the small.

First organise yourself, then organise others”.

General Zhuge Liang

Perhaps we should highlight the last sentence: “First organise yourself, then organise others”

Last Word:

Being a manager is a challenge but it is also almost infinitely rewarding to create and maintain a team of people who deliver excellent performance and produce whatever results are targeted. It is a task that takes time, requires effort and needs a considered approach.

All sorts of things can help, but only one person can guarantee that you become a good manager – and that’s you.

You may also enjoy:”What Is Successful Leadership Really About?”

Today’s News: OK, the upcoming gig I am presenting with Jill Konrath and Kendra Lee, is filling up – here are the details:

Ask the Experts: 3 Leading Sales Gurus Answer Your Most Pressing Sales Questions
Free Webinar brought to you by Landslide Technologies
Wednesday November 12th, 2008 – Free!
1:00 PM Eastern
Register Today! - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

“How can I keep my sales team focused and producing results in the current business environment? ”

“How do I increase my team’s close ratio to compensate for a smaller pipeline?”

“What are my customers and potential clients thinking right now? ”

“How can I best position my company and its services to decision makers?”

Right now you probably have a lot of questions similar to these and would like to have some answers.

Please join Jill Konrath, best-selling author of Selling to Big Companies, Jonathan Farrington internationally renowned sales consultant, and Kendra Lee, best-selling author and expert in selling to SMBs and IT decision makers, to answer these and other questions you may have about selling more effectively to BtoB prospects.

You can either come loaded with questions or sit back and listen as some of the best sales consultants in the business talk about the realities of today’s selling landscape and answer the sales questions that keep you up at night.

Register Today! – CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Tomorrow: I will be back with the latest instalment of JF Uncut, so do please join me.

The single most common mistake that organisations make is promoting their number one salesperson into the role of sales manager, thereby depriving themselves in a single stroke of their best producer and hamstringing their sales force with an ineffective manager.

The skills required for managing, mentoring and developing a sales team, are totally different from those required for selling.

As a result, it’s not uncommon to find newly promoted sales managers who regret having taken a management position and may even leave to get back into sales.

Insufficient Time for Sales Team Development:
The majority of sales managers – new and experienced alike – say they do not have sufficient time to train and develop their sales teams. They are so focused on sales results – and so accustomed to achieving success through their personal pursuit of those results – that they overlook their greatest potential source of power, the power to increase sales performance by developing their people.

Providing Development for Sales Managers:
Successful Sales Directors ensure that some sort of training and development program is in place to help sales managers continually improving the way they coach and develop their team. Equally important, top-performing Sales Directors look for ways to provide sales managers with the resources they need to perform effectively. This may mean, for example, giving managers tools with which to identify each individual salesperson’s strengths and development areas, providing them with an easy-to-use framework to address development areas, and putting a process in place that helps their team to implement new skills.

Opportunity to Make a Difference:
Every sales manager has a powerful role to play in developing and supporting their team members’ potential so that an increasing emphasis is placed on performance management to enable more salespeople to achieve more of their potential. We have identified the eight most common reasons why salespeople fail i.e.

Wrong or no selection process = The wrong person for the position

Wrong or no training = Insufficiently developed

Wrong or no planning = Expected to do all of their own planning

Wrong or no supervision = Left without competent supervision

Wrong or no motivation = Not properly motivated to meet objectives

Wrong or no stimulation = Not stimulated by appropriate incentives

Wrong or no evaluation = Not regularly appraised against a set of agreed objectives

Wrong or no executive action = Not adequately supported by a competent manager

The Sales Manager has control over all of these factors, including the final one!

Today’s News: Despite what some people think, plagiarism is not in the least bit flattering, and when someone attempts to steal a whole book, it becomes downright criminal. If you are ready to be shocked, read, “Plagiarism, Concealment or Coincidence? The Case of Bob Beck” by Charlie Green.

There is a mounting groundswell of resentment, which I fully support, and Dave Stein is also lending his considerable influence: “An Open Message to Sales Trainers, Authors and Experts”

Tomorrow: I’ll be back with JF Uncut and I will pursue my relentless attack on Wall Street, “Fat Cats”, Greenspan and Soviet financial gluttony – be sure to join me, I think you will enjoy:

“When They Grab Your Nuts, It’s Time To Fight Back”

During the 1970s and 1980s, it was common for large corporations such as Hewlett Packard (Compaq) and IBM to put their new sales recruits through a twelve to eighteen-month training programme. I know, because I went through one myself, before designing the next generation.

Today, salespeople consider themselves “lucky” if they get an initial two weeks of training.

Have companies discovered that training doesn’t really pay off?

On the contrary! Training appears to be even more important today than years ago and it is getting more important all the time.

This extract from one of my favourite books ‘All Together Now’ by Sir John Harvey-Jones articulates the last point perfectly.

“There is practically no area of business where the difference between rhetoric and actuality is greater than in the handling of people. Every businessman will always claim that it is the people in his organisation who are the key to its success. Indeed it is difficult to argue anything else. A company consists of money (which can ebb and flow almost with the speed of light), of fixed investments (which by definition are obsolescent from the very moment that they have been made), and a range of products – and hopefully a market position – which are under continual attack from competitors who are trying to produce better and more desirable products for less costs.

What a company does have, and handled rightly can maintain, is the commitment, skills and abilities of its people. This is constantly attested to by the statements in company annual reports – I cannot remember the last time I failed to see the chairman’s last sentence paying tribute to his people. Yet despite all these facts our skills at enabling our people to give their best, and continuously beat the best that come against them, are remarkably tenuous. Moreover, this area of activity is seldom subject to the sort of analysis, debate and experimentation so readily devoted to fields such as production or marketing.

Even though we are all welded to the concept of continuous improvement, when did you last see an improvement plan for the management of your people? If you have seen one, I would bet long money that the plan referred to reduction of administration costs or overheads, rather than being a plan consciously adopted to enable more of our people to contribute more.”

In 1990, I had dinner with Sir John, and I was able to clarify a number of points with him face to face: He remains one of my most significant mentors.

Less Training With Higher Expectations
So, what’s going on here? How should a Sales Director reconcile the fact that many corporations today provide less upfront training for their sales staff than in years past, yet attach increasing importance to staff development?

This is hardly a surprise, because the current stock market ethos creates a powerful dis-incentive for firms to invest in their people. A firm’s investment of human capital, in the form of training and other forms of education of staff, is not separable from the general expenditure of a corporation. It therefore appears as a cost on the corporate balance sheet.

Difficult Times
Alas, many Sales Directors, having concluded that their best strategy is to cut back on training, look instead to hire people who already possess all the talent and skills needed to do the job and send them out into the field armed with what they know. But many Sales Directors know how difficult it is to find skilled salespeople. And anyway it is not possible to equate experience or seniority with success.

Huge Demands On Salespeople
The fact is that selling in today’s climate is both an art and a science. Selling is a profession that demands a far wider range of skills than ever before – skills that require continual fine-tuning and constant practice.

Lack Of Ongoing Reinforcement And Development
The operative word here is “ongoing”. Even if salespeople have undergone progressive sales training, there’s no guarantee that they will be successful. It is common knowledge that skills grow rusty over time and salespeople are prone to pick-up bad habits along the way or to simply skip steps and take shortcuts that can lead to long-term trouble. Perhaps even more important these days, is the fact that markets, competition, technologies, and customer preferences are all in a constant and accelerating state of change.

This fact requires that salespeople are able and willing to rethink their sales strategy and approach frequently and receive a regular top-up of skills and motivational coaching.

The key word here is frequent – long gone are the days, when professional salespeople could attend a “one-size fits all” program, and consider themselves qualified for life, that mentality, as I say often enough, is being relegated to the annals of selling history.

Today’s top performers, the “Top 5% Players” wake up and smell the coffee every day, before the majority have even stirred from their slumbers. 

Today’s News: Is again scarce, as I am still with clients in the “Heart Of England” – but I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.

I will just mention, that I made a decision with this client to introduce in a number of trusted and highly respected friends, all internationally renowned sales experts: The experiment is working superbly.

Last month, Leslie Buterin brilliantly addressed a small group of young sales professionals on “cold calling techniques” and today it was the turn of Paul McCord, to coach a group of more senior sales team members on “referral selling”

Despite the fact that he already had a mentoring appointment at 7.30am CT with his own client, he delivered a two hour session at 5am CT, to my group here in the UK. That is really quite an incredible thing to do, and indicates why Paul is another member of my “inner sanctum” of high commitment, high intelligence, high profile and high integrity friends, who will form the nucleus of something very special, which is due to launch very shortly – The Global Sales Council – a small, unique, band of brothers and sisters, with a “big-picture” international focus. More soon, I promise.

Oh, and the feedback from Paul’s session? – “Superb” “Extremely useful advice” “Excellent, thoroughly enjoyed it” ”Brilliant, what a really great presentation” “What a pleasure to listen to a master” 

I have another treat in store for the team tomorrow – Nigel Edelshain will be giving them an overview of the implications of Sales 2.0 - yep, I do spoil them.

Tomorrow: I have a real surprise for you on The JF Guest Author Spot – you will enjoy it!

Even companies that enjoy the luxury of clearly superior products, realise that those products will not sell themselves. As a minimum, companies need a sales force comprised of skilled professionals who understand the application of the product range, have an in-depth knowledge of their customer base, market sector and of course the competition. But even all these elements together are not sufficient to ensure optimum performance levels and profitable sales.

So What Is A Sales Process?

Put quite simply, it is a set of procedures, which determine how a company wishes its sales team to operate – “The way we do things around here”

The most successful organisations have implemented a process and an all-encompassing framework for defining performance standards. This involves assessing, appraising, developing, reviewing, providing continual feedback on performance, as well as implementing efficient and relevant process tools

Lack Of Direction

Far too frequently, competent salespeople are expected to channel their own activities into the areas that will produce the quickest wins. Unfortunately, left to their own devices, they don’t develop and pursue a formal strategy for moving a sale tangibly forward during each prospect interaction, neither do they have a clearly defined set of goals against which to measure the progress they are making Typically, their judgment is based on gut reaction and is purely subjective i.e., “Oh yes, I’ll get that order, he likes me”, because salespeople have to be optimistic by nature. They end up “dancing around” with prospects, in the hope that eventually they will get to their chosen point on the dance-floor i.e. -the sale. In this scenario, the customer has complete control.

A Discouraged Sales Force Diminishes Sales Efficiency

When their efforts don’t pay off immediately, even experienced salespeople tend to become discouraged. They spend more and more time struggling to meet their sales quotas and working less and less efficiently.

Feeling increasingly powerless to influence prospects, they may also begin to press for a sale in ineffective ways – for instance, by arranging formal product presentations to prospects that they have not even qualified or who haven’t yet agreed that they need the solution. They allow prospects to milk them for information without getting a commensurate commitment first – and even worse, they fail to defend margin and make unprofitable sales in order to achieve quotas. The details of what goes wrong differs for each individual salesperson but the net result is always the same, a discouraged sales force, diminished sales efficiency (i.e. wasted investment of sales time and resources that fail to produce high quality sales) and, consequently, increased cost of sales which inevitably drastically reduces net profit.

What’s the bottom line? Sales never result efficiently and with maximum revenue unless the sales process is continually and closely managed. But before the sales process can be managed, it must be manageable.

Developing A Consultative Sales Process

From the Sales Director’s perspective, developing a consultative sales process means developing a comprehensive, formal, realistic and step-by-step outline of what salespeople are expected to do. This is just as appropriate for internal and totally reactive sales teams as it is for external pro-active ones. This outline includes the activity and calls they must make, the relationships they should establish with prospects, the documentation they should use in sales calls, the issues they must discuss and resolve with prospects and the tangible goals they must achieve in sequence along the path to each sale, in order to achieve maximum effectiveness.

It’s only when such an outline is in place that sales management can be in a position to:
 Monitor the sales force’s activity, progress and results,
 Assess issues as they arise and take appropriate action,
 Redirect individual sales representatives’ efforts efficiently.

Although many organisations appreciate the importance of being customer-focused and talk in vague terms about their “consultative sales process”, surprisingly few sales leaders invest the time and energy required to develop a formal sales process – a process that is at once detailed and resilient enough to guide their salespeople and permit effective management of their efforts.

Overcoming Implementation Intertia

Even when a consultative sales process has been developed, understood by sales managers, written down and circulated, it’s often not enough. No matter how brilliant, a sales process will only be effective to the extent it is followed and used by frontline sales staff. And this is where most organisations fall down: overcoming inertia – among managers and salespeople alike – and implementing the process. The hurdles that must be cleared in order to get people throughout the organisation to actually implement it are enough to cause Sales Directors to tear their hair out. But a select few, of the very best, have found some innovative strategies that have enabled them to achieve the Holy Grail: Sustained sales growth achieved efficiently, reliably and by design.

Today’s News: What a great reception we received to our first two JF Uncut posts at the w/e: If you missed them, just scroll down.

The next Top Sales Experts ebook, has been delayed and will now launch next Tuesday – October 21st – I am certain the wait will be worth it!

Over on Top 10 Sales Articles this week, we again have a very strong ten nominees – so be sure to check them out here

Tomorrow: On the JF Guest Author Spot, is the very wise and very smart Kendra Lee, who last week sent me this message:

“Now for a story of how small the world is thanks to the internet and those of us who network. This week, I was working with a new client in a planning session for his sales managers. We had a facilitation session to get their buy-in and agreement on their next steps. During the session the EVP of Sales pulled out a definition of consultative selling “from a fellow named Jonathan Farrington” and quoted it to me!!!! It was so cool to say, “I know Jonathan well. We work together.”

Now, that is cool!