Perception

Over the last 30 years, I’ve observed that salespeople tend to categorize all sales calls based on their products or services:

• Lenders often start sales calls by discussing whether the client needs a loan or how they can access capital.
• Employee benefits consultants focus on improving coverage and pricing.
• Property and casualty agents zero in on risk vulnerabilities, assessments, and price.
• Investment advisors prioritize discussions about maximizing returns, minimizing taxes, or reducing financial risk.

These approaches stem from our perception of what the client wants or needs. This perception typically arises from two factors:

1. Years of experience in the business.
2. The prospect's initial words during the setup of the meeting.

However, this perception can be flawed for two reasons:

1. Years of experience don’t reflect the current reality.
   Golf provides a great analogy. Every round is different—weather, fairway conditions, green rolls, and pin placements constantly change. Similarly, sales situations are dynamic, and relying solely on past experiences can lead to missteps.
2. What the prospect tells you initially is rarely the whole truth.
   It’s not that they’re lying, but they often describe symptoms rather than the root problem. Or they may present a problem that’s a byproduct of a larger issue.

To overcome these limitations, we must broaden our thinking and question our initial perceptions. By doing so, we can better identify the actual problems we need to solve.

Consistency

Top-performing salespeople demonstrate the importance of consistency. Research shows that 80% of the top 25% of salespeople follow a consistent sales process. What does this entail?

• Milestone-centric processes: Their approach is systematic, ensuring each step leads to a decision. This eliminates indecision and delays.
• Documentation: They record what happens at each step to track progress and identify gaps.
• Data analysis: They evaluate data to pinpoint choke points that hinder faster, higher-margin sales.
• Modeling success: They use data to replicate success consistently.

This mirrors the habits of a good golfer. Great golfers approach each shot systematically: they position their hands consistently, align correctly for putts, and maintain focus. Their methodical approach leads to lower scores and better performance compared to inconsistent players like me.

Commitment Matters

I’d love to improve my golf game, but I know it takes a deeper commitment than what I’m currently giving. Similarly, if you’re looking to improve your approach to selling—selling more, faster, and at better margins—it might be worth reflecting on how your level of commitment aligns with your goals.

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Top Sales Management Content of 2024: 

From Tony's Blog

Gain leadership insights and strategies for driving sales team success with these management-focused articles.

1. Leading a Sales Team: 10 Keys to Success (Part 1)
2. 7 Steps to Improve Your Outbound Sales Strategy
3. Leading a Sales Team: 10 Keys to Success (Part 2)
4. Using Sales Enablement Tools and Technology to Add Value to Relationships
5. Sales Prospecting Tactics

Top Sales Training Content of 2024: 

From our Sales Brew

Share these links with your team to help them enhance their sales skills with expert tips and actionable strategies from top-performing salespeople.

1. 24 Sales Tips for 2024 – From Our Sales Experts
2. The Most Common Sales Objections | Part 1
3. 5 Habits of the Best Salespeople
4. 5 Tips for Asking Your Prospect Better Questions
5. The Importance of a Quarterly Review

Top Sales Videos of 2024:

Watch these engaging videos from our sales experts to learn practical sales techniques that close deals and build relationships. Subtitles included!

1. The Most Common Sales Objections | Part 1
2. Conversations to Avoid on the Initial Sales Call
3. The Most Common Sales Objections | Part 2
4. Referral-Based Selling: How to Ask
5. The Art of Closing a Sale

Top Free Resources of 2024:

We work hard to provide a large amount free resources for sales execs and salespeople. See our most popular resources of 2024 below! 

1. eBook: Better than the Best Prospecting Book Ever Written
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5. Worksheet: Personal & Business Work Plan

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• The stage of the opportunities in the sales process
• Next steps to move the opportunities through the pipeline
• Likelihood of winning the business based
• Future sales revenue of all the opportunities in the pipeline

There are typically three challenges associated with the use of CRMs and pipeline management:

1. Validity – The true accuracy (validity) of the predictive nature of the CRM depends on ensuring that a milestone-centric sales process has been mapped and integrated into the CRM being used.

2. Credibility – Even if the right sales process is mapped and documented, there is still the element of GIGO—Garbage In, Garbage Out. If the sales team is entering opportunities into the pipeline just to appease management, without ensuring that the opportunities meet the criteria for each step in the sales process, companies will still face predictive problems with their pipeline. Furthermore, sales team engagement with using the CRM can often be a struggle.

3. Lack of helpful business intelligence – Entering data and obtaining raw numbers is one thing, but building the CRM for reporting that informs sales leaders on how salespeople are performing against their Sales Success Formula is another. Without comparative data, managers are merely monitoring activity without identifying whether there are problems in the process.

What a company should seek for sales process improvements are sales stage critical numbers and ratios, enabling sales managers to clearly and more accurately identify choke points in the sales process for each individual. Additionally, the data can and should inform managers and the organization if training and coaching are required to improve the sales team's effectiveness and results.

To make substantial sales process improvements, every company must invest in sales enablement tools, systems, and technology. However, data alone will not drive improvement. Solving these issues requires the following five steps:

1. Build a milestone-centric sales process that is part of the CRM and adhered to by the organization.

2. Create Sales Success Formulas for each salesperson based on their historical performance and agreed-upon sales goals. These formulas identify all the steps of the stage-based sales process and the sales team’s success in converting from one step to the next.

3. Monitor and update sales effort and execution data so that coaches can "catch issues early" for lead preservation and sales process improvements.

4. Use the data to develop intentional coaching strategies that help salespeople address specific challenges in either effort or execution.

5. Utilize metrics to measure success individually and collectively:

   • Percentage of salespeople hitting effort targets (outreach)
   • Percentage of salespeople improving conversion ratios at each step of the sales process
   • Average sale increases
   • Shifting the 80/20 rule to a 70/30 or 60/40 distribution
   • Improved validity and credibility of pipeline predictions
   • CRM adoption rates approaching or reaching 100%

Further validation: 87% of elite salespeople (the top 7%) follow a consistent and effective sales process, compared to only 20% of weak salespeople. To implement sales process improvements, start with these five steps.

Once you have identified your area of expertise, the next step is to develop and master a well-honed positioning statement. This is used in short conversations when someone at an event asks you, “what do you do?” An expanded version of your positioning statement would be used when making a call on a prospect to uncover their needs, to help them understand how you work with clients and how you help them. Your positioning statement should leave a prospect thinking, “that’s me!” or “how do you do that?” In other words, it resonates with them. Of course, the key to that is calling on the right target audience, those who specifically will benefit from your expertise and knowledge. That is when personal branding is most effective.

Developing your personal brand for sales success involves identifying your “Zebra” or ideal prospect persona. Don’t call on anyone other than those that fit the personas identified. Then research the best ways to reach your ideal prospect. Is it via email or phone call? Is LinkedIn, Instagram, or X their preferred social media platform? Knowing how and where to reach your target persona will positively impact your ability to hunt, qualify, and discover potential new business. Identifying your zebra will bring focus and clarity to your prospecting efforts so you don’t end up chasing or pursuing opportunities that aren’t the best use of your most important assets: your time and personal brand.

Of equal importance is to know, and clearly articulate, what isn’t a Zebra for you. If you know that as well, it helps to bring clarity to developing your expertise, personal brand, and prospecting efforts. Here are some reasons why knowing what isn’t a zebra is so important:

It Eliminates Ambiguity

• If you aren’t specific about who you serve best, it’s hard to get introductions; if you are vague in your prospect description, it will be more difficult to ask your advocates for introductions. Introductions have been proven to be the #1 way that top producers grow their business. Be specific and clear about what type of zebra you serve best.

It Reduces Confusion

• If you aren’t crystal clear on what you are looking for and what you are NOT looking for, your advocates might make an introduction for you, only to find out you can’t help the person they introduced. When working with introduction partners, tell them, “This is what type of business I’m looking for.” “Of equal importance, I really can’t help these types of businesses… and here’s why.” That brings clarity to the conversation.

It Reduces Your Opportunity Cost

• Your opportunity cost is simply this: if you called on Company ABC, that means you aren’t working on Company XYZ. Your opportunity cost is what you aren’t working on that may offer more value to you and your organization.

If you know what you don’t want and the reasons why, it will likely reduce the quantity of opportunities in your pipeline, but the quality will increase dramatically. Once your expertise, personal brand, and zebra are clearly defined, your ability to find and win business will improve dramatically.

The first step is to recognize that motivation is an “inside-out” job. When the topic of motivation is discussed, we typically think about incentive compensation, sales contests, and recognition programs. All of these certainly encourage sales teams to focus on selling because they are rewards. However, you will gain true engagement and enthusiasm if you create an everyday environment that encourages each individual to identify and visualize their own internal motivation.

Do you remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid? The bottom two largest tiers are Physiological and Safety because these are the most basic needs of every individual, including salespeople who are starting at the bottom and working their way up to self-actualization. They must first have income for food, shelter, safety, etc. Only once they have attained all of these basic necessities can they turn their attention to the higher tiers of Love/Self-Belonging, Esteem, and Self-Actualization. This still holds true and is an important concept in building a high-performance sales team!

To put it another way, salespeople do not care about corporate shareholder value unless they are shareholders themselves. What they care about is food, shelter, clothing, recognition, paying for college education or weddings, saving for retirement, etc. These are personal desires and make up the vast majority of things that are important to people. So, the solution is to create an environment where this internal motivation can take place. (See The Dream Manager book by Matthew Kelly.)

Creating a Culture of Goal Setting and Recognition

This means that it is up to you to help your salespeople identify what is important to them. Make the effort to set up time off-site that is dedicated to planning and spend time developing each individual’s dreams and goals. This is time that you will spend on your business instead of in it. Take a day or two to help you and your team take a giant step forward to plan for the future and help them achieve their personal best performance.

Create a process where people can establish personal goals because this is where the motivation comes from. This is also where the passion and desire come from. Hence, this is where the business plan must come from. Very few companies spend time understanding the personal goals of their people, yet they are the basis for any salesperson achieving their goals.

You might position this as though you are the coach and the salespeople are players on a competitive team. Each of you has a part to play so that the whole team wins. Salespeople will usually understand and relate to this because they are competitive by nature. If someone does not get this, they may not be suited for selling. Selling requires desire, commitment, and a need to win.

Create an environment where people get a chance to unplug and sit down to outline their goals and dreams, and establish timeframes, attaching financial values to these items. Once you have attached financial values, you know what level of prospecting and selling activity is necessary for each salesperson. You will also have a much better idea of what realistic standards look like.

Reward yourself and your salespeople when they achieve success. So, as your people go through and identify their goals, and as you sit down as an individual salesperson to identify your goals, be sure to identify how you will reward yourself when you achieve them.

In some ways, salespeople are like kids in that they want to be recognized for their successes. In almost every home in America, we have a kid’s Hall of Fame, otherwise known as the refrigerator door. Every time one of the kids does something great, they come home through the door and look for attention: “Look at this. Look at my art. Look at the A on my science test.” And what do we do? We put their success on the refrigerator door, where everyone can be reminded of this accomplishment.

Somewhere, you will want to create a theoretical refrigerator door for your salespeople to recognize their successes. A visual reminder, even a poster board with a graph and names that is posted where all can see, is a great way to keep everyone motivated and to reward those who deserve recognition.

A good sales manager will also have a system for helping a salesperson get back on track and correct problems that have led to failure. For instance, you must have a conversation with Jane, who did not reach her prospecting goal for the month. You will ask her, “How important is it for you to succeed?” “What do you need to do to fix this problem?” “What kind of process or program could you put in place to get on track to succeed?”

Assuming that Jane has desire and indicates she is willing to do the work, you will say, “OK. This is what we are going to do. Every Thursday at 10 a.m. for the next four weeks, I am going to come to your office and listen to you make prospecting phone calls.” Then, you must follow through each week. This is the kind of discipline and structure that will get Jane back on the road to success. This is also the kind of hands-on coaching necessary for building a high-performance sales team.

Read more in our free eBook - The Extraordinary Sales Manager!