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.
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.
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