Worldwide OfficesSales – creating successful sales habits for the New Economy.
There are many things that are changing or have renewed focus in this new environment we call ‘The New Economy’. Sales performance is always a concern and area of focus for businesses. The recession has caused businesses to focus even more on this area, but more focus alone is not the answer. The following is a blog posting by Lars Tewes (pronounced ‘Tavis’). Lars is a true sales leader, and delivers very sound advice and guidance to businesses on how to put in place reliable sales processes and behaviours that drive true sales performance. So I post the article below because it contains some very simple but key messages. The business world has truly changed. We need to modify our sales behaviours to reflect The New Economy. The following article gives us some great advice …
“Preparing for the new economy” is a very exciting prospect. However, the reality is that there will be some winners and some losers and the question to ask is what will separate the two? Roger Martin-Fagg described the economy we have just witnessed as the “rentier economy”, saying we are now entering a period when the businesses that survive will be those that truly add value and drive out the less effective and inefficient business models.
If that is true, then the link between the “all important” client relationship and our product/service offerings is the sales function. “Sales culture” and “sales competence” are often the two missing links. (I am naturally referring to professional and ethical selling as opposed to the stereotypical negative image that salespeople have often been tarnished with). Working with clients in the tougher market of the past 10 months (Vistage members among them), I have been amazed at how many still leave the sales teams’ success to chance. We see thousands, if not millions of pounds, being spent on IT and operational systems to improve efficiency and costs. However, when it comes to the most important link between companies and their clients, we often find them neglecting the front line that represents them – their salespeople, not in terms of commission plans (many of which are generous), but much more real issues.
There is often a view that you are either born with a natural sales talent or not (with phrases such as, “he is a natural salesperson”, “she could sell ice to Eskimos” and “he has the gift of the gab”, being attached to top sales people), rather than selling being a learned skill, so in many cases company culture almost shuns sales. Roger Martin Fagg emphasised that trust and relationships, not transactions will be the key differentiator in the new economy. Those that prosper in the new landscape will be the ones that develop a true sales culture across the organisation.
The second key element is committing to strong sales leadership. Sales Leaders have often been promoted into this position because they were top salespeople not because of their leadership skills, and so are set up to fail because they have not been given the correct structure, training and environment for leading. Talented, experienced salespeople get lazy and miss opportunities, new salespeople arrive motivated but very quickly become demoralised by spending time with the wrong people and do not stand a chance of being successful if they do not have strong leaders.
Therefore if a company is to prosper, they need to give sales managers the structures, measurements and tools to help hold their people accountable to their goals. They must support, encourage and endorse their people to be strong in the following three High Performance Sales Habits:
- Commitment to continual skills development: their own sales skills, the products and services they offer, the market / territory they work in or their client knowledge.
- Commitment to Self Management: discipline, organisation, planning, delegation, team work and, most important, activity.
- Commitment to Self Motivation. Like sports professionals it is essential to consciously work on confidence, self-talk, goals and attitude.
The astute sales leaders have realised that sales is not a numbers’ game, so much as it is a ratios’ game. For example, if you know that it takes five calls to get a meeting and three meetings to get a proposal, and three proposals to get a sale, and the average sale is £2,000, then for the first time you can focus on the areas that need fixing. We call these ratios the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and when tracked over a period of time, they DO NOT lie. You should work very closely with the salesforce to analyse these ratios, to see what you need to work on at each stage to improve your sales. You cannot manage what you cannot measure and CSFs must be visible in the salesforce and used as a motivator to help show people how they can improve.
In summary, do not leave sales to chance. By having the right systems, training and tools in place, it allows the salesforce to be more flexible in the areas they can add value and show their real talent. At SBR Consulting we believe that those companies that prosper will be those who were committed to “liberating the sales potential” within their organisations.
Case Study
We are working closely with a Vistage member where, initially, the leadership said the sales team were respected and important, however, when we consulted with the other departments, they saw it differently. Other departments were saying things such as; “We don’t know what they do in the sales area, but that’s okay, they are different to us”. Even more interestingly, there was not a sales leader represented at the weekly director meetings. By firstly helping to distinguish this “us and them” mentality and encouraging the whole company to see themselves as part of the sales culture, we saw immediate change in attitudes and support.
By Lars Tewes
2:01 pm on March 26th, 2010
All good stuff Lars however, as Vistage chair and business coach I have come to appreciate the key ingredient for success to day is “Discipline”. You can have the best systems and processes in the world and provide top flight training however, they will all acount for nought if there is no discipline in the application. The days of easy pickings are over and now it is down to the business that is disciplined in everything that it does “do it right first time every time”