For many of us, amateur commentary and critique of
‘professional’ football is a national pastime. It’s a shame we
don’t pay such close attention to our business. Take a moment to
ponder this…….
·How would you feel about investing £millions in a new player
for your team without having seen him play beforehand? ·Once the
player joined your team, how regularly would you want to see him
play in order to assess his ability, strengths and weaknesses ?
·How personalised would his ongoing coaching be to ensure his
fitness and skills continue to improve?
I can take a fairly accurate educated guess on your answers. So
I’m wondering why we don’t apply the same principal to our sales
professionals?
·Why is it that companies continue to invest millions in a sales
team in order to grow their business without ever really seeing
the sales people in action? ·Why are salespeople are rarely
assessed and coached in the field to improve their performance
and thus maximise the organisation’s return on investment? ·Why
is it that there is little emphasis on improving the skill and
knowledge levels of salespeople other than, perhaps, a little
‘product’ training?
I saw an advertisement last week, which read ‘Sales Director
wanted £28 million’. Although this appeared to be the salary, it
was of course, the estimated cost to the company were they to
make the wrong selection.
·Why are many senior management teams so cavalier about
measuring the real return on investment achieved by their sales
team other than tracking revenue? ·Why don’t they understand
where, and what added-value help is necessary to increase sales
performance?
What do you know about the standards of performance of your
salespeople and will this be enough to achieve your corporate
goals? Surely it is sheer madness to ignore the part of your
business that is potentially capable of generating such massive
growth and profit both now and in the future?
And so back to football Before purchasing a player you would
study his track record. You would assess both his fitness and
his, skills (such as passing, shooting, heading the ball and his
ability to accurately position and read the game). Scouts and
management would observe the person playing prior to making such
a huge investment. Judgements in relation to their ability to
blend into the team would be considered seriously, a thorough
medical would take place and a contract negotiated.
Now let’s see what often happens in many UK organisations when
it comes to selecting, managing and growing a successful sales
team…….
New salespeople are often recruited from a steady stream of
(often irrelevant) c.v’s from selected organisations which have
a vested interest in placing their candidate. The interview
process is often informal and based on ‘gut feel’ because the
sales managers performing interviews are unprepared, under time
pressure and inadequately experienced in selecting top sales
performers. A manager often interviews a candidate without the
ability (or recognition that it’s necessary) to match the
Knowledge, Attitudes, Skills and Habits of the candidate with
the requirements of the job. In addition, the candidate is
rarely evaluated in a real life situation – we don’t get to see
the ’player’ on the ‘pitch’. Joint interviews of candidates are
decreasing due to time pressures. Proof of previous sales
performance, P60 supporting evidence of past earnings and,
perhaps most surprising, references, are seldom requested.
Very often, the end result is the selection of the wrong
candidate which then takes many months to become apparent. By
which time of course, you’re stuck with the problem of reversing
your expensive decision with employment law and numerous other
ramifications to consider.
The lynch-Pin Point
In this age of the internet isn’t it more cost effective to
invest less cash on finding the candidate while investing more
in the correct selection process? Recruiting the wrong
salespeople is extremely expensive, time consuming and
unproductive so why do we not insist on a professional selection
process in the same way that football managers do?
Your new salesperson joins the team………….
Once on board, our football manager would insist on continued
meticulous screening in training and during match play whilst an
on-going personal programme of coaching and improvement was
agreed.
But our Managing Director………..
Gives the new sales person a territory and a sales target based
on the organisation’s requirements (i.e. top down quota). The
person may be given an induction programme and perhaps even some
product training if he’s lucky. However, he seldom receives
ongoing job assessment and coaching and 6 months later has, in
all likelihood, still not benefited from a visit with his
manager. The company management adds to this folly by implicitly
supporting the lack of standards of performance, systems and
methodologies required to measure the necessary quality and
quantity of sales effort.
The boards of directors usually ignore these issues when markets
are buoyant and business is going well. The reality is that in
fact, they are missing £millions in lost opportunities. They
then react in ‘panic mode’ when sales are decreasing which often
results in new management appointments to allow the same
problems to occur once more -- only dressed in a different
wrapper.
This is not the way to plan for success and it is certainly not
the way you would run a football team!
We call this ‘management by hope’.
So why is the sales function not producing the return on the
investment required?
We couldn’t attempt to address all the reasons but listed below
are some snapshots of what we have seen over recent years.
·The detail of the sales function is seldom understood at board
level. The belief that if you simply ‘do more’ you’ll get the
result is frighteningly common. No attention is paid to the
‘doing more’ of ‘what’, or to ‘whom’. ·The direct sales plan is
not integrated into the marketing and business plan and the
disconnect is apparent. ·The sales management team is usually
rewarded for achieving short-term revenue and profit goals with
little measurement of the qualitative and quantitive parts of
the job. ·Structured up-skilling and ‘leader & coaching’
programmes seldom exist. ·Apathy and low work rate within the
sales organisation. (The drumbeat is too slow.) “If Bill hits
his targets and only works 4 days per week, why do I care if he
plays golf every Friday?” No thought is given to how much more
Bill could achieve, how this would effect his motivation and
indeed, how his targets were set! ·Lack of a ‘sales culture’ and
excitement ·Lack of recognition of true professional selling
·The introduction of the internet and e-mail has given
salespeople another excuse not to make contact with customers
and cultivate their network
We are in danger of seeing standards of sales performance reduce
year by year unless we take action now.
So what are our choices?
It’s very simple really……………Organisations can continue in the
same vein and leave sales results to chance, just hoping things
improve……. or they can take action.
How to change?
It is not possible to cover the whole spectrum of sales issues
regularly facing Managing Directors but here are a few checklist
items that you could take action on now.
·Ensure your sales propositions are articulated and clearly
understood by the salespeople and your customers. Your customers
must really understand the business deliverables of your
products and services and the implications of choosing an
alternative. ·Ensure you have a leader of sales who really
understands the sales function and allocates time to managing it
properly. Forbid them to be in the office for more than a small
portion of the working week. ·Prepare open questions that
establish the needs and wants of your customer and then relate
their needs and wants back to your products and services.
·Prepare a ‘person specification’ template to ensure the
standards for existing and new people are met. ·Be sure you know
how you want the salespeople to spend their time. ·Introduce a
professional selection and retention programme for all new and
existing salespeople. ·Use outside expert resources where
appropriate to plug the skill, knowledge and experience gaps
within your own organisation. ·Plan, manage and measure the
quality and quantity of sales effort taking place and compare
this with the pre-agreed required activity to achieve the
result. ·Immediately introduce ‘bottom up / top down’ planning
to check the credibility of your revenue plan ·Link forecasting
systems to the quantity, direction and quality of activity
required rather than just to historical sales results ·Know and
understand how your sales team stacks up against the competition
So where do you start?
·Start with a thorough review of your sales organisation. The
people, procedures, processes and current performance and
highlight the areas for immediate, medium and long-term
improvement. This can be done very quickly and at quite low cost
·Build a programme to manage change and improvement by
introducing standards and key performance indicators and ensure
salespeople and management ‘walk the talk’ ·Where necessary, for
fast, expert advice, appoint an external organisation that has a
proven track record of implementing change and improving sales
performance.
Do not think you can fix these issues by sending your people on
a training course. You’d be better off taking your team for a
‘fun day’ and you’ll change no more. Remember the football
manager who works with his team, shares his experience and
improves their skills at the coaching ground? While training
might be helpful in the short term, there is no substitute for
getting ‘on the pitch’ to play and being observed in real live
situations.
It takes a brave executive, especially a Sales Director to admit
they need outside help -- but all sportspeople have a coach who
is continually improving performance so why should it be
different for your sales professionals?
Conclusion
A 10% improvement in sales performance will make a vast
improvement to the profitability of a company and in most
companies this is very achievable. However, it does require an
investment of time, and some money. It requires people to stop
some of the unproductive things they are doing now, and,
instead, spend their time focused on what is truly effective and
productive.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and
over and expecting different results”. Benjamin Franklin
At some point, whether you’re ready or not - things must change.
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