The sales management activities that we are performing today are creating the results we are achieving today.  What activities are you doing now that are creating your current unsatisfactory results?  It is up to us as sales leaders to set higher standards for sales behaviors and hold people accountable so that we get better results.

It is a given that successful sales management requires contributions on many levels:  skill, time, effort, effective execution and systems and processes to support coaching, performance management and recruiting.

To help understand what makes a successful sales manager, it is helpful to review the Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople. I recently asked the participants of a workshop to identify and share those habits that they believed contributed to the success of their best salespeople.  Below are some of the common habits identified:

• Develops great relationships
• Networks regularly
• Good time management
• Gets to decision makers
• Is selective in prospecting
• Provides exceptional customer service

Then I asked them to talk about the flip-side of the list – those habits that inhibited or hurt a salesperson’s ability to close more business.  Below are some of the habits they identified:

• Sells on price
• Inconsistent prospecting
• Procrastinates
• Presents to the wrong people
• Sells to anyone that fogs a mirror
• Poor prioritization
• Is too comfortable

How about you and your habits?  What are those habits that you can point to that you KNOW have a positive impact on your team’s sales behaviors and results?  Here are some that I observe and hear about:

• Coaches: in-the-moment to get a deal closed
• Reports sales results
• Makes joint calls
• Sets goals
• Conducts regular sales meetings
• Reviews and reports pipeline

This is a good list and with some additions, it can become a great list when we identify the skills of a great Coach, one of the most critical roles of an effective sales leader.  To examine what else you might want to consider, take a look at the following list of elements necessary for successful coaching:

• Debriefs sales calls effectively
• Asks quality questions
• Controls emotions
• Allows salespeople to fail
• Implements and manages the execution of a consistent sales process
• Motivates when coaching based on individual/personal goals
• Coaches to improve skill and change behavior
• Gets sales people to follow through on commitments

It’s not enough to just have the skill.  In order for managers to be successful at having a sales team built for growth, the manager must be in the habit of using those skills.

Being an extraordinary sales manager is grueling and time-consuming.  It requires attention to detail, the ability to have tough conversations with those who are not meeting their numbers, the desire and commitment to grow yourself and your salespeople, consistent activity and patience.  Like the coach of a winning team or conductor of an extraordinary symphony, you have the ability to positively affect the success and the lives of your salespeople and company. 

A guest post by Mark Trinkle, Chief Sales Officer, Anthony Cole Training Group

Hello, darkness, my old friend.

I’ve come to talk with you again.

Because a vision, softly creeping,

Left its seeds while I was sleeping.

And the vision, that was planted in my brain,

Still remains…

Within the sound of silence.

So, that is the answer, courtesy of Simon & Garfunkel…And the question is this: “What song, released by a duo over 50 years ago, can help salespeople today?”

Yes, the unmistakable sound of silence. Wait a minute…does silence make a sound?  If you are a professional salesperson, you would say it absolutely does.  Susan Scott, the author of the wonderful book, “Fierce Conversations”, offers up some great advice when she suggests making your conversations more impact-ful by allow the silence to do the heavy lifting.

I think what Susan could have in mind are the hundreds of thousands of salespeople who treat silence like it is the Zika virus…they instantly run away from it.  But, what if silence was good within the context of having a powerful conversation?  What if silence led you a deeper level in a conversation?

Most salespeople are afraid of silence because they perceive it to be a) awkward or b) a sign that the prospect has checked out on them.  But, remember that you can speak much faster than people can listen…so sometimes they just need to be given time to allow their internal processor to catch up.

Here’s one more thing I have observed with salespeople.  They ask a great question….a killer question… the prospect goes radio silent…and then our salesperson ruins the moment by collapsing like a poorly dug prison tunnel.

Let the silence do the heavy lifting. I know it will be a strange feeling at first, but sometimes strange is actually a good thing.  Give your prospect some space to process the questions you ask them.

Thanks for listening. Now, go do some heavy lifting…actually, let the silence do the heavy lifting for you…and sell like a champion today.

A guest post by Jack Kasel, Sales Development Expert, Anthony Cole Training Group

“What we have here . . . . is a failure to communicate.” 

You may recognize that line from one of my all-time favorite movies, Cool Hand Luke.  If you get nothing else out of this Sales Brew, do yourself a favor and go rent that movie.  You will be glad you did. 

Struther Martin’s character in the movie, Cool Hand Luke, makes that statement when the prisoner’s don’t do what is expected of them.  This same execution problem can occur during the sales process and it can cause problem with moving the sale to a timely close.  It usually manifests itself when something like this occurs . . . . . I think I know what you are going to do and you think you know what I’m going to do, but neither one of us really knows for sure what the other one wants or needs.  Thus, the need for the AWATL.

The AWATL stands for “As We Agreed To Letter”.  It is a brief correspondence that the salesperson should send out to clearly indicate what the expectation is (for both parties) on what is needed and expected.  It can be used early in the process or during the middle and is also extremely effective just before you present your solutions to the prospect.

The AWATL process is pretty simple, but it can be very effective.  It is a bullet-point letter or email which spells out the go-forward expectations for both the salesperson and prospect.  It also contains date-specific deadlines to make sure the process doesn’t get stalled or delayed.  Everything works better with deadlines and that is especially true when closing sales.  As mentioned previously, it can be VERY effective just before your closing presentation. 

The important elements of the AWATL includes:

• The problems you have uncovered that your prospect NEEDS to fix
• The budget you need to stay within
• All the decision makers who will be present
• Finally, and most important, the agreed-to and anticipated date when a decision will be made.

As sales professionals, we should try to control as many aspects of the sales process as possible.  We believe the AWATL can help you help you accomplish that goal… or at least help eliminate any misunderstandings that may hinder you from closing more business. 

In closing, please remember this, someone needs what you do . . . . make sure you don’t “fail to communicate” with them.

In a scene from Men in Black, Will Smith’s character, Agent J, asks, “Why are we here?” (He is in a meeting room with the head of Men in Black, Agent Zed, along with several other recruits all from various branches of the military.)  Agent Zed asks one of the recruits to answer the question.  The young recruit stands and declares, “We are the best of the best, SIR!” (link to watch youtube video)

Isn’t that what you should be looking for when recruiting sales and sales management talent?  Yesterday, I wrote a post about hirebettersalespeople.com.  In the post, I mentioned the book, Who.  In that book, Geoff Smart and Randy Street suggest that you create a scorecard to help in the evaluation process.  The scorecard is supposed to be used to find that someone who has a 90% chance of doing what only the top 10 salespeople can do.  I think that is a stretch and unrealistic.

Now, to be fair to the authors, I believe they do a nice job of explaining that an “A” player for a company in New York is probably different than an “A” player for a different company in Manchester, NH.  In other words, not all “A” players need be the same nor are they created the same.  But, aside from that, I still have an issue.

If you look at many great “A” players in sales, the arts or in sports, they just didn’t show up that way.  Many have been groomed and developed over many years to become that “A” player.  The key is to look for the “A” DNA in someone.  We know what that DNA is.  (Click here to request a sample of the ideal fit candidate analysis)

What I believe makes sense is to look for someone that has a 92% chance of success at helping to contribute to the 96% of your results.  Let me explain.

You may or may not have read other articles I’ve written in the past about the 80/20 of the 80/20 and Perry Marshall’s book – The 80/20 of Sales and Marketing.  If you follow the method I’ve described (based on Marshall’s book), you arrive at the following in Figure 1:

Figure 1

If you have revenue of $20,000,000 generated by 50 salespeople and then conduct the 80/20 of the 80/20, you discover that $19,200,00 of the 20,000,000 (96%) is generated by 18 of the 50 salespeople (36%).  Based on this, I believe that your best recruiting strategy is to find people that look like your top 36% or have the same DNA as that top 36% that are generating 96% of your revenue.

I’m sure the authors of Who would question the wisdom of this.  “Why…”, they might ask, “would you settle for salespeople that are less qualified than those that are at least as good as your very best?”

It’s not a matter of settling.  It’s a matter of understanding the today’s marketplace and understanding that talent has to be developed. 

First… the market place:

There has not been a single prospect or client that I’ve talked to in the last 5 years that has not shared with me the challenge of finding, recruiting, hiring and successfully on-boarding new talent - with the biggest challenge being the “finding.”  There are a couple of reasons for that huge challenge:

• Most companies don’t work at it consistently and so they suck at it when it comes time to recruit.
• There isn’t a process/system in place that utilizes filtering processes to attract the right candidates.
• The pool of available candidates is smaller today than it was with the boomer generation.
• Those available in the candidate pool today have a tendency to find jobs other than sales.
• The un-steady economy has kept experienced salespeople from seeking other opportunities for fear of “last in, first out”.

Next… talent development.

As stated above, talent just doesn’t fall off of trees and, unfortunately, everyone in your market is vying for the same “A” talent.  If you cannot offer the same compensation as some of your competitors to attract and hire “the best of the best”, then you have to make great selections from the talent that is currently available.  In order to do this, you should have a very good understanding of what your talent looks like. Specifically, you should start looking at the 36% of your current talent that is generating 94% of your results and stop looking for and hiring people that look like your bottom 64%.

• Identify the results being generated by the top 36%.
• Identify the activities and behaviors of this top group.
• Identify the following:
  • Will to sell
  • Sales DNA
  • Figure-it-out factor
  • Trainability and coachability
• Determine if you have the talent in the management role to:
  • Coach
  • Motivate
  • Manage performance
  • Mentor, grow and develop people

I grew up on a farm where we primarily grew peaches and blueberries.  I just visited the old homestead and, though many things have changed, one thing has not changed.  In the farm acreage, there are various plots of blueberry plants.  Some plots contain plants that are mature enough to be harvested while others have plants that are still being developed and grown to produce.  In the nursery plots, there are plants with solid DNA that are being cultivated, fed and cared for so that, at the right time, they can be productive.  The same should be done with the talent in your organization.

For further assistance, call us at 513.791.3458 and ask for Alex – our expert at hiringbettersalespeople.com. 

This is a blatant blog post boasting about our hiring deliverable - Hirebettersalespeople.com.  I normally don’t do this in this forum in such an obvious fashion, but I cannot help it today.  Allow me to explain…why this…why now.

I have a book on my shelf, Who, written by Geoff Smart and Randy Street.  Those two are famous in the world of hiring better talent.  Their first book, Top Grading, made the best seller list and is now in its third edition printing.  As I started to read Who, much of what I was reading was familiar and I assumed it was because I had read other materials written by the authors. Turns out that it was familiar because I had started reading that book years ago!

Here is the premise of the book in a nutshell:  The “what” in your business is the easy part of business.  The “who” is what costs you time, money, freedom and maybe, eventually, your business if you don’t get the right “who”.  The “who” is what separates your business from every other business in your space. It’s the difference maker in your peace of mind and making the “what” actually happen.  In short:

Nothing else matters nearly as much as the “Who”.

In January of this year, 2016, we launched Hirebettersalespeople.com.  Actually, 3 years ago, I managed to capture the domain name and just kind of sat on it.  Over that time period, it seemed that every one of our clients who hired us for sales and sales management development complained about their difficulty in finding talent that would actually perform as expected when they were selected.

Sound familiar?

Based on these discussions with various associations and the on-going noise about the same issue I heard at every conference and workshop I went to, I decided to put our offering together and market it to our clients and prospects.

Hirebettersalespeople.com combines 1) our experience/expertise/knowledge about what it takes to be successful in sales and sales management, 2) Objective Management Groups #1 in the world pre-hire assessment tool and 3) Dave Kurlan’s Sales Talent Acquisition Routine. (STAR).  To learn even more about it, CLICK HERE to view our slidedoc on Hire Better Salespeople.

According to the research documented in the book, a bad hire of $100,000 can cost a firm 15x that amount in salary, training and development, lost opportunities and poor performance by others that this hire was supposed to be managing/leading.  How big is that number for you?

Stop the bleeding. Get the right people on board. Stop spending so much time on the “what” until you get the right “who” in place.  Nothing else you do in 2017 will have as much impact on finding, hiring, and coaching the right people to grow your revenue and company!