ACTG Sales Management Blog

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Creating Your Sales Success Formula: The 5th Sales Productivity Tool

Posted by Tony Cole on Fri, Nov 01, 2019

In our 5th Chapter of our Sales Productivity Tools blog series, we discuss the idea of creating a Success Formula for your sales team, which only works when you have a team that is committed, motivated, and takes responsibility for their decisions and outcomes.

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To support my objectives and goals of one day playing college football, I realized I had to have a success formula.  I had to have a workout routine for strength and conditioning.  I had to be coachable.  I had to eat the right foods (My dad always threatened to tell Coach Cacia if I didn’t eat my salad). And I had to take care of the bumps and bruises.

When I got into the "real" sales world (Insurance business vs. taking orders for Nautilus Exercise Equipment) I was introduced to the One Card System created by Al Granum.  At National Life of Vermont, we were given a box with index cards and a Success Manual.  We were trained to use the cards to identify the various stages where a prospect was in the sales process, and we used the Success Manual to record our activity.  Today that entire process exists in whatever CRM your company uses.

A Success Formula is an old school sales tool that works but only if...

You have a sales team that is committed, motivated, and takes responsibility for their decisions and outcomes.

How Do Your Salespeople Compare?

Every salesperson knows what the right behaviors are to be successful. They know they have to reach out to prospects, schedule appointments, disqualify people and companies that don’t fit their business model, close and service accounts, and much more. There isn’t anything mystical about what it takes to succeed.  But the challenge is for the salesperson to be disciplined themselves to do the things they need to do based on their own success formula.

When salespeople fail, it isn’t because they lack the skills or product/industry knowledge needed to succeed. Most salespeople fail because they won’t do the things required to be successful

The answer as to why a producer won’t do those things lies in the findings of the pre-hire assessment and sales force evaluations.  To gain a better understanding of someone’s potential to be successful in sales, it would be important to have a deep understanding of the following:

  • Will to Sell
  • Sales DNA
  • Sales Competencies
  • Sales Skills

Not having this information would be like trying to coach a football team, direct a play, or construct a building without knowing the desire, skills and tendencies of the people you are relying on to meet your objective. 

To assess your current or incoming talent and their ability and willingness to make the right decision – be prudent – then it helps to have findings such as those identified in Objective Management Group’s – Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis.


Check out some of our additional resources below!

Sales Productivity Tools

Why is selling so #%&@ hard

How Do Your Salespeople Compare?

Topics: Sales Training, sales evaluation, hiring salespeople, Sales Coaching, increase sales, hire better salespeople, sales skill assessment, consultative selling, sales productivity tools, consultative sales coaching, corporate sales training, hire better people

How to Grow Sales: The Never Ending Question Just Found ANSWERS!

Posted by Tony Cole on Wed, Aug 24, 2016

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Growing sales depends on the ability to know the answers to the right questions.  Often companies make a decision to invest in their people in order to improve performance.  Sometimes the investment pays off: other times, not so much.

When it pays off, it normally is a combination of the right things coming together at the right time:

  • Leadership that thinks sales skill improvement is important to improve sales
  • Sales management that really knows how to manager performance
  • Sales management that understands that coaching is the job
  • Recruiting that works to make sure the right criteria are being used to hire superstar sales people and doesn't settle for less
  • Marketing programs that increase visibility, strengthen the brand and generate interest in the product.
  • An economy built for growth
  • A no-excuses environment
  • Metrics for success that matter
  • Systems and processes that support effective selling
  • Salespeople that are motivated and committed
  • Salespeople that have the right skills to sell to the market the company is attempting sell to
  • Etc., etc., etc.

But… what do you do if sales growth isn’t happening as expected or needed?  Where do you start? 

  • New management
  • New leadership
  • New salespeople
  • New CRM and other sales enablement tools
  • New marketing strategy

And therein is the problem; most companies don't have the answer to the question(s) of…

  • How do we grow sales?
  • Where do we start?

At our company, Anthony Cole Training Group, we have partnered with the #1 sales team assessment company in the world – Objective Management Group.  With this partnership, we answer four critical questions for our clients:

  • Can we be more effective?
  • How much more effective can we be?
  • What will it take to accomplish that?
  • How long will it take to accomplish that?

To answer those four critical questions, our prospective clients work with us in an initial interview to get a “lay of the land”.  We spend time asking questions to find out what work isn’t getting done.  We listen to understand and we uncover the symptoms of the problems.   We discuss the impact on the business and the solutions attempted in the past.  What we know about every company is that they are perfectly designed for the results they are getting today and will get tomorrow.  If those results are not acceptable, then we go to work.

We go to work with them by providing them a series of questions that have to be answered by senior executives, sales leaders and, ultimately, the salespeople.  This thorough process results in a report that answers the 4 questions we’ve already discussed.  The answers to these 19 questions ultimately answer the BIG question – How do we grow sales?

If you’ve been looking for the answer(s) to that question, keep reading and let us know how we could possibly help you or find you the help you need.

  1. How Does Sales Leadership Impact Our Sales Force?
  2. What Are Our Current Sales Capabilities?
  3. How Motivated Are Our Salespeople and How Are They Motivated?
  4. Can We Generate More New Business?
  5. Can We Be Better at Reaching Actual Decision Makers?
  6. Can We Shorten Our Sales Cycle?
  7. Can We Sell More Consultatively?
  8. Are We Selling on Price and Who Can Become a Value Seller?
  9. Is Our Value Proposition Consistent?
  10. Can We Close More Sales?
  11. Do Our Systems and Processes Support a High Performance Sales Organization?
  12. Can We Be More Consistent with Our Sales Process?
  13. How Well Are Our Sales Leadership Strategies Aligned?
  14. Do We Need to Change Our Selection Criteria?
  15. Can We Improve Ramp-Up?
  16. Can We Improve Our Pipeline and Forecasting Accuracy?
  17. Can We Improve Our Sales Culture?
  18. Who Can Become More Effective in Their Roles?
  19. What Are the Short-Term Priorities for Accelerated Growth?

Contact Tony Cole Directly:  513-226-3913 (call or text).  If text, use subject line: “I need answers!” along with your name. Or email: tony@anthonycoletraining.com

Additional Resources:

 

Topics: sales evaluation, OMG, managing sales teams, evaluating sales teams


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    About our Blog

    Anthony Cole Training Group has been working with financial firms for close to 30 years helping them become more effective in their markets and closing their sales opportunity gap.  ACTG has mastered the art of using science-based data and finely honed coaching strategies to help build effective sales teams.  Don’t miss our weekly sales management blog insights from our team of expert contributors.

     

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