Create a Success Formula for Coaching Your Sales Team

Coaching your sales team for success starts with the math. The details in the numbers will help you help your people succeed. Ask yourself, "What numbers must my team submit?" and then break it down per advisor.

Start with the end in mind. Figure out how much each salesperson must sell so that your team reaches its annual goal. Making the math easy, see the following example: Assuming you need $500,000 annual new business sales and you have 5 salespeople, you know that you need $100,000 of new business sales per sales professional. If you know the average size sale is $10,000, then you know each sales producer must make approximately 10 sales. These are their Smart Numbers.

But we must continue this analysis. These Smart Numbers are supported by activities that also have Critical Ratios that must be calculated and tracked. In other words, how good are they at each step of the sales process? So now you must calculate the activity ratios per salesperson.

What is Jane's ratio of presentations to closes? What is her ratio of sales opportunities to presentations? What is her ratio of appointments to sales opportunities? What is her ratio of contacts to appointments? And what is her ratio of dials or attempts to contacts? These are called Critical Ratios. In order to coach your sales team, you must know these.

Perform a Math Analysis to Set Benchmarks

Perform this math analysis with each individual on your sales team. Then establish a benchmark.

If you know that each salesperson's annual sales goal is $100,000 and you know the current ratios needed, per the analysis above, you will then be able to extrapolate to get the specific behaviors necessary per individual to reach his or her annual sales goal.

In other words, if the current ratio of a salesperson's dials to contacts is 10:1 and you know that his ratio of contacts to appointments is 4:1 and his ratio of appointments to sales opportunities is 3:1 and his ratio of sales opportunities to presentation is 1.25:1 and you know that his ratio of presentation to close is 4:1, then you can approximate that he will need to make 40 presentations, 50 sales opportunities, 150 appointments, 600 contacts, and 6000 dials annually (120 dials weekly or 24 dials daily) in order to reach his annual goal of 10 sales.

Breaking it down:

• 100,000 / $10,000 average sales = 10 Sales

• 10 Sales / .25 (4:1 ratio) = 40 Presentations

• 40 Presentations / .80 (1.25:1 ratio) = 50 Sales Opportunities

• 50 Sales Opportunities / .33 (3:1 ratio) = 150 Appointments

• 150 Appointments / .25 (4:1 ratio) = 600 Contacts

• 600 Contacts / .10 (10:1 ratio) = 6000 Dials or Attempts

If these numbers are annual numbers, each of these behaviors should be reduced to weekly and daily activity numbers so that you have the data necessary to coach your people in real time.

In other words:

• 6000 Dials or Attempts / 50 Weeks = 120 Dials or Attempts per week

• 120 Dials or Attempts per week / 5 Days per week = 24 Dials or Attempts per day

This is an example of a Success Formula—the daily and weekly numbers that must be identified so that you can hold your people accountable. You will coach your advisors to perform to these numbers. Each week you will remind each of the number of calls they must make.

Track Performance Against the Success Formula

Once these numbers are identified and communicated to each of your salespeople, you must evaluate individual performance against their Success Formula. Every week, you must compare actual activity against these benchmarks to see if each salesperson has completed the behaviors identified in his Critical Ratio analysis.

Once the activity numbers have been identified, communicated, and tracked for a time, you will begin to see who is making the effort—the dials, the contacts, the appointments, etc.

Is John making the effort? Is he making the dials and contacts? There is absolutely no excuse for lack of effort. If you have a salesperson who is not making the effort, you have a new set of problems and the solutions are few. John can either make the effort, resign, or be put on performance probation. If he does not improve, he should be reassigned or terminated within a specific time period.

If someone on your team is not making the effort—the dials, the contacts, the presentations—your sales figures will reflect it. If an individual is not meeting a conversion ratio level identified in the Critical Ratios, you will know what area you must focus your efforts on. This is how coaching your sales team begins with the numbers.

Focus Coaching Beyond "Run Harder" Techniques

When I was coaching at Iowa State University as a strength and conditioning coordinator, my first task was to evaluate each player's fitness level. As a result, we knew, when George and other defensive linemen ran less-than-acceptable times in the 40-yard dash, that we would get crushed by Oklahoma and Nebraska because their players were bigger and faster. At the time, our coaching technique sounded something like "George, you must run faster." At the beginning of fall practices, when players were out of shape, this may have been adequate coaching. However, as the season wore on and players were better conditioned, this type of coaching was ineffective.

I was subject to this same typical but-less-than-additive coaching when I was in the life insurance business. My manager, Bob, would look at my numbers and tell me that I needed to see more people. How many of us are guilty of coaching people that way? How many of us have been coached that way? This "run harder" coaching technique might be effective with a salesperson who is not making any effort or with a new hire. But if he is working hard and doing the behaviors, you must uncover his choke points and adopt more constructive coaching techniques.

Get more help with coaching your sales team in our eBook The Extraordinary Sales Manager below!

Hiring better salespeople is one of the biggest problems identified by the companies participating in our programs. The question is always, “How do I hire better salespeople?” Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question. But one thing you must recognize is that you and your process are responsible for the quality of the salespeople on your staff today. In other words, your recruiting process is perfectly designed for the team you have. So, if you need to hire better salespeople, you will need to change your recruiting process.

Recruiting is like sales. A salesperson must have a system. They must have a pipeline. Their activity must be consistent. Like the salesperson, you must have a system and you must execute the recruiting process exactly like you wish your salespeople to execute their sales process. Recruiting, like selling, is not a “sometime” thing — it must be a consistently planned and implemented activity.

Build a Recruiting Pipeline to Start Hiring Better Salespeople

You must have a Recruiting Pipeline, like your salesperson has a Prospecting Pipeline. Individual salespeople are required to fill their Prospecting Pipeline. Sales managers and sales leaders must be required to fill their Recruiting Pipeline. After all, if you had salespeople who didn’t have sufficient Prospecting Pipelines, you would be concerned about their future and the future of your company. As the person responsible for hiring better salespeople and driving sales production, the same should hold true for you and your Recruiting Pipeline.

To implement a Recruiting Pipeline, ask your sales team to let you know if they run across someone at the networking opportunities they attend. Ask them who they know. “Who should we be talking to? Do you know a salesperson who might be looking to make a change?” You must make your own efforts as well. Sometimes salespeople will not wish to offer up names, thinking that these people might present competition.

Meet with other employees to find out who they know who might be a good fit. Put together a Recruiting Team and ask these people to submit candidate names once per week. Implement a Recruiting Huddle and hold yourself and everyone accountable. Talk to your neighbors, your tennis partner, your golf friends. Ask them who they know who might be looking for a new opportunity in sales. You never know where you will find your next producer, and your goal is to fill your Recruiting Pipeline with prospective hires.

You must also determine your Pipeline Success Formula — how many names must you have in your pipeline to hire one good salesperson? How many names must you acquire to find one candidate that you will hire, contract and on-board? If you don’t already have a Recruiting Pipeline and have not done this consistently, you will have to guess until you get enough experience.

Hiring better salespeople requires you to be proactive. Have a consistent process, do the behaviors and inspect your activity just like you do your sales team’s activities.

Identify the Ideal Salesperson Candidate

Last but not least, you must identify the Ideal Salesperson Candidate. What are the skills and strengths most necessary for success in your company, industry and marketplace? It is imperative that you determine a profile for the ideal salesperson because otherwise you might hire just to fill an opening, thinking a warm body is better than none. In this process you must identify the type of salesperson you need and how your current sales staff measures up to the ideal salesperson.

I recommend an objective assessment that screens for sales skills, weaknesses and compatibility like the OMG Sales Candidate Screen. The Sales Candidate Screen gives you a succinct and accurate glance at a recruit. Will they take responsibility for their successes and failures? Will they get referrals? Can they handle prospects? Will their desire to be liked get in the way of selling? Do they take put-offs? Will they make presentations to unqualified prospects? Are they a hunter who will go out and find business, or a farmer who cultivates current business?

So, you must know what you are looking for in a candidate and you should know in advance the problems that a candidate is bringing to the table. Clearly resumes are not the answer because they typically present a stellar candidate. Face-to-face interviews are often misleading and can take you off track if you particularly like or dislike a candidate.

Next, you must implement a 5-Minute Prescreen Telephone Interview with the goal of initial discovery. Is the resume accurate? How does the candidate handle the phone call? In this case, you are the prospect, and your candidate needs to sell you on themselves.

The idea is to create an environment on the phone just like the salesperson will face when they are prospecting. Thus, it should be a bit uncomfortable. You must find out how the sales candidate will act under pressure.

A good sales candidate will try to engage you by asking questions. This means that they will likely attempt to do the same in a sales situation with a prospect who is rejecting them. Perhaps they will even try to close for an interview. This means that they will likely attempt to do this with a prospect. If they do one or the other, they pass the 5-Minute Interview and are on to the next step.

Remember, your current recruiting process is perfectly designed for the team you have. Are you ready to make changes in your recruiting process so that you can hire better salespeople?

• Ask questions.
• Listen to what they say.
• Understand what they say.
• Listen for what they don’t say.
• Ask questions about what they didn’t share.

What seems so simple is quite complex. To build trust, salespeople must be very skilled at asking questions so that when they dig a little deeper than normal, it does not seem like an interrogation. How do they do that? With a conversation in which they are engaged and genuinely interested in the prospect or client and NOT thinking about the next sale or product to offer.

The right time will come to provide solutions, but trust will be built along the way if the right questions are asked and answers are “heard.” A very common problem with many salespeople is that when they hear a cue such as, “Our payment process is just not working efficiently,” they will jump too fast to offer solutions. To truly understand that problem, more questions need to be asked, such as: “What have you done to address that?” “How long has that been going on?” and “How is this problem impacting you?”

Now how does a salesperson go about finding out what a prospect or client is NOT saying? Using the example above, if a client or prospect has had a problem that has been going on for a while, to find out what they are NOT saying, you could ask them: “Why do you think the company continues to just live with the problem?” They might bring up systems limitations or budget allocations — any number of things — but it’s all good information for determining next steps, if any.

Another idea to find out what a client may not be saying is to ask them: “If another agent called and asked to meet with you, would you say yes? And if so, why is that?” This should be a genuine, inquiring conversation and cannot come off as being defensive.

Another way to find out what customers want and to better meet their expectations is by asking them: “What one or two things could I do more or better that would help you?” Then, listen closely to what they say and keep your antenna up for their safe words: ok, reasonable, fine, pretty good, happy. If you are shooting to build trust and grow advocates, you will need to exceed expectations and look for words that indicate you have outpaced others in your efforts and delivery to serve. Words such as best yet, irreplaceable, always deliver.

Five Capabilities That Support Building Trust in Selling

Here are five practical sales capabilities that successful salespeople master to help them in their quest to building trust in selling:

1. Ask the right question, the right way, at the right time. Asking questions is the key to great selling, but only if the questions are the right ones and they are asked in a way that builds trust and helps the prospect to further disclose details around their SMA (Severe Mental Anguish).

2. Listen closely to the answer. Salespeople must really listen. Most of the time the initial problem a prospect identifies isn’t the real problem. Salespeople must uncover the real problem by listening intently and asking probing questions, digging ever deeper with each follow-up query. Resist the urge to pitch the product!

3. Dig deeper with the following techniques. Salespeople must master questions and statements like the following: “Tell me more about that.” and “Why is that so important to you?” They must be comfortable asking questions like: “Is that problem compelling enough to make you take action?” and “How will you find the budget?”

4. Reject rejection. Salespeople need to understand that selling isn’t personal. So, if they don't move forward with a particular opportunity, they must be able to recover, reset, focus on other opportunities, and continue to prospect.

5. Be prepared. Scheduled prep time is essential. Salespeople who are well-prepared are better able to utilize their sales capabilities when they need them most. If they are practiced and comfortable going into a sales meeting, they will be able to operate under pressure.

In a highly commoditized industry such as financial sales, building trust in selling efforts is the superpower of differentiators. Salespeople should take a minute to review their top 20 clients, for example, to think about how deeply the trust factor is present and create a focus to turn more customers into trusting clients.

Every sales leader’s calendar should have regularly scheduled slots for coaching salespeople. You should hold coaching sessions every week, say on Tuesday from 10 am to noon. Although you may not know who you will be coaching or what sales skill you will be working on, you will put on your coach’s hat every Tuesday for those two hours. Your salespeople will know that you are available and that they are invited to this session each week. This practice sends a message to your salespeople – “I am here to help you succeed during this time. I am not just here to collect data and remind you when you are failing to execute.” It says that you are committed to consistent sales coaching and their success is a priority to you.

Why Consistent Sales Coaching Matters More Than Ever

Whether held virtually or in-person, you must have coaching on your schedule weekly. Effective coaching focuses on skills and behaviors—the techniques. Sales coaching should include the following:

1. Asking questions

2. Drilling down to get real answers

3. Getting commitment

4. Helping salespeople overcome their own objections

5. Correcting sales performance issues

This time is not for teaching product knowledge or structuring a deal. It is for delving into the art and science of the sale rather than the mechanics of the product/service design of the offering. You can measure your coaching success by the improvement you see in the sales behavior ratios of your people. For example, if more first calls turn into opportunities or if closing ratios improve, they are getting better. You will also know your people are improving when they perform consistently better in the field. Driving improvement through consistent sales coaching takes commitment, from you and your salespeople.

Get Commitment from Your Salespeople

Gaining commitment is key to the ongoing development and improvement of a sales team. Salespeople commit to what is important to them. What motivates each salesperson is their own set of personal objectives, goals and ambitions. Your job is to help each individual uncover these personal goals and help them understand that, if committed, they will reach these goals.

Next, you must help each discover where they stand relative to these goals. When there is a gap—such as when the personal income forecasted from their current sales pipeline and closing ratio will not be sufficient to buy their dream house—you must help them discover the pain of not achieving this goal. Help each understand, through a series of “drill down” questions, what their future looks like based upon current production. This process is an important part of getting a salesperson to commit to personally desired outcomes.

Once you have gone through this initial discovery and drill down process, you will arrive at the salesperson’s ultimate desired outcome. In the case of a salesperson who is underperforming or failing to execute effort or skills, you must get them to agree that failure to achieve the desired outcome is not an acceptable option.

You must ask, “Is that a problem? Are you sure that’s a problem? And is it compelling enough for you to make changes? What will you do differently?” Only after the salesperson verbally acknowledges that they want and need to change can you move to the next step. Only then can you get the salesperson to agree to some form of disciplined structure around changing their sales activity.

Once you have a salesperson’s commitment to fix a problem, you must get them to agree to do everything possible to succeed. At this point, you can implement a consistent sales coaching process that can help them move toward their goals. Do not ask for a salesperson’s commitment and then not do your part. If you are to be an effective sales coach, helping your people to achieve their goals, you must make your own commitment to do whatever is necessary. A lack of consistent sales coaching on your part will translate into a lack of commitment in salespeople.

Effectiveness as a sales manager requires many skills, tendencies, and attributes. We partner with Objective Management Group (the #1 Sales Evaluation and Assessment Tool), and together, we have identified five must-have competencies for a sales manager:

1. Managing Performance
2. Coaching
3. Motivating
4. Recruiting and Upgrading
5. Coaching an Effective Stage-Based Sales Process

These five functions, plus some additional content related to systems, processes, and effective selling, make up our Sales Managed Environment (SME) program for managers.

A number of years ago, I went through ocular plaque radioactive surgery. It's a procedure where my eye surgeon knocked me out, manipulated the eyeball, and sewed a gold-plated disc to the back of the eye. The purpose was to kill the cells associated with a choroid melanoma. Post-surgery included placing an antibiotic cream under the lower eyelid, covering that with a patch, and then covering that with a lead eye cover. It also, in the state of Ohio, mandated that I stay in a room with a lead door for four days. After four days, they took me back to surgery, removed the disc, let me recover, and sent me home. That is when I really began to notice the importance of two lenses to view the world.

For a while, I could not see anything on my right unless I turned my head. I now have some peripheral vision to the right, but really just beyond my nose. The other night, Linda and I were walking the dog, and I turned my head to the right to talk to her—and she was gone. I had to do about a 270-degree turn to find her.

It became very apparent that, in order for me to function effectively, I have always counted on two lenses to see, work, and enjoy the world. Without both lenses, it forced me to work harder and not nearly as effectively as I did prior to surgery. So what does this have to do with sales management effectiveness?

Everything!

I've been teaching and coaching our SME™ program for 25 years, and the personal experience with my eye that I just described has made me view our approach in a different way. Each one of the components of SME™ is really a lens for a company sales leader to use to "see" how the sales group is performing. Kind of like my doctor used a blood test, a CT scan, and a biopsy to determine how well my body was functioning. One data point alone doesn't tell the story. Another negative analogy to use would be looking at the scoreboard at the end of the game to determine how well the game was played. The score is a lagging data point and only tells you who happened to win. It doesn't tell you why one team won and why the other lost. That is what sales leaders need to know to drive sales effectiveness with their teams.

Using all five lenses in your organization will tell you several things. In the words of marketing guru Seth Godin (you should watch the video), you will better understand:

1. Why they are racing to the top or the bottom
2. What they need to do differently to race to the top

For more information on these five lenses for sales managers, feel free to pull down our eBook, The Extraordinary Sales Manager. This new view just might give you what you need to see your team’s activities from a new perspective—and tools to execute the necessary changes to improve your team’s sales effectiveness.