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How To Optimize Your Sales Team's Performance
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The How-To Business Book
11/20/2000
By: Michael C. Bingham
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Don't let anyone fool you: Top-performing salespeople aren't born. They're made.
Sure, many personal attributes and characteristics of sales success - intelligence, high energy level, sturdy self-esteem - are either innate or develop early in life.
But selling is a science, not an art. And to optimize the performance of your sales personnel you need to give them the very best training and tool, as well as have in place systems that provide both support and directional incentives.
It all begins with what one former President used to call “the vision thing.” It's important to remember that sales is not marketing, which encompasses important functions such as corporate image or generating leads. These are important, but at some point your people have to be able to turn a prospect into a sale. Successful salespeople have calculated that they need to make X number of calls to generate Y number of prospects to generate Z number of sales. That's called having a plan, or a map.
The second issue is people. What drives successful salespeople is not necessarily encyclopedic product knowledge or a bulging Rolodex (although both these help); the best salespeople evince a certain character, a certain drive and momentum - people you would bet on to succeed at pretty much whatever they do. As is true in much of human endeavor, the winners are those who are driven to win, to close the difficult deal.
The flip side is, it's unwise keep your losers around to drag the rest of your team down. Many of the most successful companies, Jack Welch's GE, for instance, regularly lop off the bottom ten or 20 percent of sales performers. If an employee is in a position where he can't succeed, you're not doing him any favors by keeping him there.
Motivation is a key issue for salespeople being thrown into the fray each day, and motivation comes, ultimately, from leadership. Many if not most sales managers fall into one of two broad categories: the dictatorial, sell-sell-sell type of manager; and the type of manager who provides real leadership by setting an example, providing sound and useful coaching, and nurturing people to be winners.
There are as many ways to motivate people, but most fall into three classes. First is the carrot, which in the form of most sales forces assumes the shape of commissions on actual sales. Then there's the stick: 'You make your goal/ quota, or you're out of here.'
The dangers of managing through fear and intimidation are self-evident. But be careful in employing the carrot as well. A salesperson off to a good start, earning large commission checks for two or three or four consecutive months may begin to regard that reward as an entitlement. Then, when the salesperson suddenly fails to earn it, it becomes a de-motivator. As experienced sales managers will tell you, over-paying people can be worse that under-paying them.
In hiring, one effective way to separate the potential winners from the losers is to identify which individuals are willing to accept a higher risk-reward ratio. If you have a job applicant who insists on a higher base salary instead of a higher commission ceiling - that's probably not the salesperson you most want.
The carrot and the stick are both external motivators. There's a third source that is internal: the self-esteem, pride and character that drive people to succeed no matter what the obstacles. This third source is the motivator that really drives performance.
For managers who need to ratchet up performance of their team, the central issue is training and development. There's product training, which involves developing a keener understanding of your business' product or service. There's also sales training and technique, but it also involves buttressing salespeople's inner strength and motivation.
Many companies are discovering that forging an ongoing relationship with a professional sales training organization can pay long-term dividends, especially in terms of development. Remember, the key objective is to develop a cohesive team of sales professionals - not just order-takers.
In thinking about development and training, it is essential to inculcate concepts that are part of the fabric of your company's culture. These concepts need to be continually reinforced - whether you employ outside or inside sales training. Repetition is a powerful tool: Psychologists say it takes at least three weeks of daily, repetitive behavior to change a habit.
The plan, the people, the motivation, the development - cutting a clear path to sales success is the best way to keep the people who bring home the bacon for your company on track, and keep your top line growing. Our guess is that you can handle the rest.
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