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What specific tactics have you seen dramatically improve a sales team's performance?
We will talk about this on this Roundtable, I'd love to hear what you have seen work.
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8 Answers
Craig, this is a question that should stimulate a huge amount of interaction. John's given a great start. I'll try to add to what he has said.
First, sales performance improvement cannot be a tactical initiative--it has to be a strategic initiative that every one in the organization focus on constantly.
First, you can't improve sales performance unless you know where you are at and where you are going, so you have to have a base set of metrics and goals. As a sidenote, too many organizations don't have these in place, so it's often difficult to know how much progress you've made in performance improvement initiatives.
Related to this, the organization's strategies and priorities must be well defined and well understood by everyone.
Second, performance improvement must be repeatable--across the organization and with each individual. To make it repeatable you must have a strong set of processes in place, otherwise you just have random action and luck at play. Without a process and set of structures in place, the "detect and fix" cycle that John highlights cannot happen.
Third, extraordinarily strong leadership and coaching has to be in place. Without continuous coaching, it's impoassible to drive high performance. Managers must integrate coaching into their daily activities it's impossible to drive performance to the highest levels possible.
Fourth, there needs to be some level of constancy---that is it's impossible to achieve performance improvement if management has adopted a strategy du jour philosophy. It's like hitting a moving target--if the strategies, priorities, initiatives are constantly changing, it's impossible to improve performance.
Fifth, there has to be an underlying culture within the company that values continous improvement, that values people development. Too often, it seems we have a "disposable" approach to people--we hire and fire them at whims, hoping to use this activity to drive performance improvement.
I could go on, but for the time being I'll stop here--hopefully people will add more.
Ones which:
- promote learning from practice
- help Reps detect + fix (at least some of) their own mistakes, fast
- let Reps sell at the cadence of each buyer
Thanks to Dave's comment, mine will be mercifully short. Great question: when I first read it, I thought of my latest trip to Advance Auto Parts to buy a replacement car battery.
On the way to the back counter, I saw a large shelf of gas additives, ostensibly for goosing up engine performance. But I always wonder who benefits--the consumer or the companies that market these products? If your car's engine doesn't produce much horsepower to begin with, if it's out of tune, or if you just have a poorly-designed engine, what's the point?
I agree with Dave that tactical improvements won't correct poor strategy, bad management, lack of will and motivation, and more. Sure, you can implement a sales contest or customer promotion. You can even increase commissions. But without the other elements that Dave mentioned, you'll be right back where you started.
Five things:
Explicit goals & expectations
The right compensation plan
Effective, regular & constructive sales coaching
Actively managed CRM and sales automation tools
Qualified leads
There's more, and plenty of detail behind each of these, but that's a good place to start.
Craig,
I cannot argue with what has already been written - so my thoughts may be a restatement. That said there are five elements I look at within a sales team to improve performance; assuming performance is ultimately productivity...the amount of revenue you are getting for the money you are spending. These five elements are:
1) Structure (headcount ratios; channel investment, geography, etc)
2) People (character, competence and chemistry)
3) Process (sales, forecasting, prospecting, pipeline)
4) Compensation
5) Tools
Having attainable sales targets that are tracked and posted for all to see can dramatically improve a team's performance as it triggers the salespeople's natural competitive instincts.
If posting nunbers isn't appropriate, use "percent of target" as a parameter.
I think all the key points have been made.
Dave's point, "First, sales performance improvement cannot be a tactical initiative--it has to be a strategic initiative that every one in the organization focus on constantly," is second most important, in my mind.
Most important is, "..extraordinarily strong leadership ... has to be in place."
So it's ultimately up to the senior management team to hire a very strong sales leader. Without that little else matters in the long term.
Learning from each other. Allowing team members to experience what other sales reps do and how they perform in different aspects of the sales cycle. Sometimes, simply allowing teams to see each other in action will increase knowledge and execution of improved activities. This is easily added to a training program. So ofter the managers have no idea how their reps are performing out in the field. This approach works wonders with our clients.
Craig Bissett - CEO - Hiring Simulation www.hiringsimulation.com
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