Through years of experience managing sales teams there are a few factors which are sometimes over looked which can help dramatically increase number of closes. The following article covers a few key points to get your salespeople producing to their highest capacity – especially if you find he is not producing the results that you expect from him:
UNDERSTAND YOUR SALESPERSON’S OPPORTUNITIES:
As with any salesperson, it is always a fine balance of their manager to know whether the cycles they have ‘in progress’ are valuable, and sometimes even real. I read through some salespeople’s opportunities (prospects who have expressed some interest in your product) and they look OK and even somewhat impressive – and I am guessing that some of these would be major sales that would handle many months of budgeted sales.
The first thing I would need to do is understand each opportunity in great detail. If my salesperson is doing well and getting their targets, I don’t worry so much about the detail, but when they are not making targets, I need to live, breath and eat their opportunities. Firstly, however, you need to ensure you understand the industry and customers or you don’t have the knowledge to make any assessment.
It is so important to know this information, because not understanding it can have dire consequences for your sales. For example, if the opportunities are real and about to pop, putting pressure on the salesperson would cause him to perhaps either leave or the sale to prolong, or worse, fall through. If the opportunities are not so real, leaving him to chase them will just cost you money and give you a false security.
If you find yourself, like many business owners, out of the office probably too often, I know the feelings you are going through as sales are not coming in, wage bills are piling up and it is natural to panic. And correct! The thing you need to do is get the information, which I suggest should also involve a call to some of the contacts associated with the opportunities to be sure what the salesperson is reporting is true. This is done best as a survey type call to see that your clients are being well cared for rather than an inquisition into your sales team. I have found many times that making these sorts of calls myself has speed up and increased the value of the sale as I see and can handle things that my sales team sometimes cannot.
This information will allow you to get out of mystery and know the next step with your salespeople. On one hand if he is not doing well it could be that you need to let him go but it could be that you need to work more closely with him to ensure these opportunities are all converted.
WHERE TO FOCUS YOUR ATTENTION:
Sales people are interesting. They constantly need reassuring, help, coaching, training, inspiring, and especially when they are down. There are several tricks to this. Firstly, you MUST put most attention on the best performing sales people in your team. Second, the sales people must feel that you really care for them and are there for them at any time to help them close a sale. They need to feel comfortable to approach you with their problems, mistakes and lost sale information. If they don’t have this feeling, they will hide things from you and it’s hiding things that slows and stops their sales.
You also need to know that he is using his time effectively. For example, could he have 2 or even 5 times the quantity of opportunities? Or is he working to capacity and more opportunities will just disperse his attention too much? Again, to know the answer to this you will need to spend time and see what he is doing with his day, if he is staying organised, be sure he is not forgetting to chase leads and opportunities and also to see if he is not closing deals as fast as he should.
Often I find that the business owner/founder is normally the most experienced, with the best production record in the sales area of their business. So I am sure you will know very fast if he is doing the right things to lead to him getting the right things.
Sales people respond best, or turn around their sales best when you get them to put their attention on periods when they were selling well. Asking them “Why are your sales so low?” just caves them in and stops them communicating. But asking them, “How did you make so many sales in March? I want to know because you can sell so much?” puts them into pleasure moments when they are succeeding, and brings them up emotionally allowing them to be much more solution orientated, as well as seeing what they were doing in March that they are not doing now.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD CRM (Customer Relationship Management, processes implemented by a company to handle its contact with its customers)
One very important tool that you MUST use when you have a sales team, and especially when you work out of the office like you do, is a real time CRM system.
For my business, every call, e-mail, proposal, follow up is logged in our CRM. That is every activity that happens with our clients, opportunities and leads. We use a system where I can log into anywhere, anytime from my phone, and it even SMS’s me reports each day of each sales persons activity. It is very cool and I feel comfortable having the info, and knowing that we are not losing leads and not servicing opportunities and clients. It means I can exactly apply the tool required to get the sales up, and without spending all the time to find out why sales are down!
Another important part of a good CRM system is that if you do need to let the salesperson go, all the info will be in the CRM system for you to seamlessly take over the cycles. You would have invested perhaps $30k or more in direct costs to get the opportunities that he has built (hopefully built!) and it would be horrible to lose this investment if he leaves.
This is just a few basic points but ensure you implement these and you will find that the results you salespeople are getting can be dramatically lifted.
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Gareth Jekel
Managing Director
Performia Australia
greg@performia.com.au
Ph: 1800 603 023
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