We often find there is a direct connection between sales and competitive sports. Due to his time on the football field as both a player and coach, Tony Cole has identified 9 Sales Productivity Tools that will help your producers build better plays, hit harder on the field, and come home with more wins. 

Over the next several weeks, Tony will be releasing a series of blogs discussing the 9 Sales Productivity Tools mentioned below in greater detail. Stay tuned for more information!

I recently started working with the Moeller High School football team and am inspired to share some of my experiences in this blog and with my followers. I will try not to get too carried away with my football stories, analogies or metaphors but I will likely fail.

Coaching football and coaching sales have so much common ground. My current experiences at Moeller have helped me identify 9 football related sales productivity tools that I will introduce below and write about for the next 9 weeks. It's the season!

When these sales productivity tools are used by managers and salespeople, they will create more productive and effective sales results.

From 1963 to 1984, I either played football or coached football.  It was in my blood, it defined me, and it was all that I thought about.  It’s how I framed my world.  My language and thoughts were always tied to the game, the sport, and the competitive nature of football.  I still think and talk like a football player/coach:

• You’re out of bounds
• That’s a Hail Mary!
• You must have played without a helmet
• He’s on the all shorts team
• That’s a long shot
• What do we have to do to win?

If you are not a football fan, you are missing out on something great.  No other sport requires the same level of commitment, skill, discipline, courage and motivation as football. But I’ve been out of football since 1984.  However, this spring, my friend Tim Mackey asked me to go to lunch to discuss an opportunity he was offered at Moeller High School. That is how I am now involved in one of the most storied high school football programs in the country.

As I started working with the team and other coaches at Moeller, I discovered the linkages between coaching these two great sports: sales and football. The sales productivity tools I describe below are inspired by working with our football players and will help all of the salespeople we coach as well. 

Dig in!

9 Football Related Sales Productivity Tools

1. Practice Schedule – All professionals need practice. Every team I have ever been part of has a schedule for practice.  In that schedule, the game is broken down into units where each specific aspect of the game is practiced:  Offensive line, defensive line, running backs, linebackers, special teams, two-minute drill, punt return.  You get the picture; you need to have a practice schedule for your sales skills!
2. Probability Sales Scorecard – The probability scorecard is like the yard markers on a football field. The markers tell you how many yards you must go to score or how many yards you have to protect to keep from being scored upon. The probability sales scorecard will tell you, with a high level of accuracy, what the likelihood is that you will either win or lose the deal.
   
3. Huddles –Just like in football, huddles are a communication system that provides coaches with real time information so you can make real time decisions.
   
4. Goal Setting – Most teams have a period prior to the season when the staff discusses objectives and goals for the season. The discussions are based on previous performance, expected competition and the talent level of the returning and newly recruited team.
   
5. Success Formula –Each team knows or anticipates what it needs to do to win a game. They need to identify metrics such as: How many yards on first down do they need? What are the average yards per completion and what is the completion percentage? How many passes need to be completed?  How well does the punt return team have to perform and what is expected of the defense in the ‘red zone’.   You will have the opportunity to download the success formula sales productivity tool in a future blog or you can get it now at:  Sales Pipeline Calculator
   
6. Ideal Week – Every team goes into a game with their ideal game plan. In other words what plays do they want to run in various situations on offense and what defenses will they call given field position and tendencies of the opponent.  Very little is left to chance. However, there must be flexibility because field position can change in an instant.  You need to have a game plan week in and week out and that is done by first identifying what your ideal week looks like.
7. Pre-Call Checklist – In football, plays are most often called by the offensive coordinator from the sideline. However during weekly practice, the coordinator goes over a series of pre-snap situations with the offense so they can quickly adjust to the play called depending on what the defense does.  You and your salespeople should go into EVERY appointment with a pre-meeting or pre-call checklist so that they are better prepared to execute the play (sales plan) on the call.
   
8. Post-Call Checklist – After every game and sometimes after every practice, the coaches review film and compare it to the plays or defenses called. This allows for a measurement of performance against the planned execution (pre-call checklist).  The post-call process allows for corrective action / training and more appropriate follow up steps with the prospect.
   
9. Performance Recording Tools – Back in the day, we used 8-millimeter films to review our game performance. Now digital audio and video devices give football teams instant feedback on practice and game performance.  These tools must be used to record practice, and in some cases, live scenarios, so that actual performance can be observed. Observing what someone does is a lot more impactful for both the performer and the coach than attempting to coach based on hearsay or just data reports.

Each of these sales productivity tools will be discussed in detail and available to you in future articles so subscribe to Tony's blog today. As a bonus, sign up below for your 10th sales productivity tool- our Weekly Sales Brew!

I've got a fill in the blank for you.

Are you ready?

"I could sell more if only I could _____."

What comes after could? We had the chance to ask that question around the country with a variety of companies both large and small and it's interesting to hear what salespeople say when you ask them to fill in this particular blank.

Sometimes, you'll hear...dare I say excuses. Sometimes, you'll hear...dare I say, valid reasons for why they're not selling as much as they would like or their manager would like. When we hear that answer, we immediately think about the core steps in the sales process.  

You have to go see people. You have to call them first. Then you must go see them, you must have meetings, you must qualify them and deliver presentations, and of course, you have to win your fair share. 

As you think about calls, meetings, dials, qualifying prospects, and closing deals, ask yourself these major questions.

If you're not where you want to be in 2018, ask yourself,

1. Why are you there?
2. How long have you been there?
3. Are you fully committed to getting back on track?
4. What's going to be required to get back on track?
5. Do you have to get there?
6. What happens if you don't?
7. What is the problem costing you?
8. Do you have to fix it?

If you know anything about our organization, you know that is how we encourage the unveiling of the sales process. 

Asking your prospects questions like:

• What is going on?
• What do you have to fix?
• How long has it been a problem?
• What have you done to try and fix it?
• Do you have to fix it?
• What happens if you don't fix it?
• What's this problem costing you? 

All of that fits into one of two categories: Excuses or reasons. 

Just remember as you answer the question, "I could sell more if only I could ____."  If your answer is an excuse...

"Excuses are the nails used to build houses of failure."

Now go out there and get it done!

It’s this simple:  If you want great barbeque ribs, brisket or chicken, the key is low temperature and slow cooking. Having said that, if you want maximum flavor and tenderness, make sure you sear or char the meat first, then go low and slow.  This is an undeniable truth.  Just read the Science of Cooking and discover all the neat things you can do to improve the outcome of any meal.

EXPERIENCE DOESN'T GUARANTEE FUTURE SUCCESS

20 years in sales does not guarantee future success.  Just ask anyone that has lost a sale at any time in their career.  Something always happens just a little bit differently.  If there isn’t an adjustment, a lesson or some learning as a result, then the salesperson is prone to repeating the sames mistakes or errors over and over again.

When you effectively coach your people, they will get better.  When they get better, you will close more business, more quickly at higher margins.  This is undeniable as well.  Just look at the information provided by The Sales Management Association.  **FYI - it’s also undeniable that a lack of coaching has a negative impact on sales success and talent development!

(Bob Rotella – coach to PGA Tour Players – Author – How Champions Think)

THERE IS ALWAYS TIME TO COACH

In our Sales Management Certification Program, we discuss 5 Keys to Coaching for Success in our coaching module. These 5 keys cover what to do and how to do it when you are face-to-face with your salespeople. Many managers, before going through our certification, complain/tell me/make excuses that there isn’t enough time to effectively coach their people.  I don’t buy it. There are several opportunities for coaching without adding to an already busy schedule:

1. Sales meetings
   1. Segment on sales training
   2. Role-playing phone calls to get appointments
   3. Role-playing conversations to get appointments with internal partners
   4. Role-play how to position financial planning
   5. Overcoming objections
   6. Appropriately dealing with questions, and stalls.
2. Pre–call strategy sessions
3. Post-call debriefing sessions
4. 1-on-1 intentional coaching sessions
5. Ad-hoc moments when they ask you if you have a minute
6. Every time they give you an excuse for lack of effort or execution
   
   

IN-THE-MOMENT COACHING VS. COACHING FOR SUCCESS

Coaching does take place today, but most of it is in the moment. Kind of like when a coach calls a time out in a game. The team is gathered around the coach and a strategy is developed to take advantage of the “in the moment” opportunity. Normally, that’s the type of coaching that takes place in sales – in the moment.  That type of coaching helps close a sale, get an appointment, and/or move an opportunity through the pipeline, but it does nothing to change behavior or improve skills!

Do you find yourself or your sales managers constantly covering the same ground to close deals, improve effort or refine execution?  Are opportunities getting stuck in the pipeline in the same spot for the same reasons over and over?  When you look at the performance (effectiveness and productivity, not just the results), do you see actual improvement in sales ratios like average size sale, conversion ratios from opportunities to closes and average production for each quintile in the team?

Those are the types of metrics that determine if your coaching is effective!  Failure to collect that data leads to failure of the effectiveness of your sales manager and your sales team.  Collecting the data and then doing nothing about it leads to lackluster enthusiasm for entering data, thus limiting the integrity of your forecasting.

THE 5 KEYS FOR COACHING SUCCESS

So, let’s assume for a second that 1) you are collecting data and  2) you are creating opportunities to coach people.  We can now discuss The 5 Keys for Coaching for Success.

1. Gain insight from data points: Your data points have to include data (numbers representing leading and lagging indicators), observational opportunities via joint calls, and observations made during role plays in meetings.
   
   The data points you have should not be a secret to your people. Share with them what you know and what you’ve observed.  Prior to meeting with them, call them to set up the coaching meeting. Tell them that the data you have indicates there might be some problems with them hitting their established extraordinary goal.  (Remember the extraordinary goal discussion?) Then tell them that you want to meet with them during your established coaching hours. Set the appointment.

2. Provide feedback: Now that you both have the date, you don’t have to ask the worse possible question in your meeting, “So, Joe, what’s going on?”  Instead, you acknowledge that you’ve looked at the numbers and they’ve looked at the numbers and then you ask a question about the problem that you see.
   
   Let’s pretend that you see a choke point where his conversion of conversations isn’t leading to the assumed number of appointments. All the other assumptions look good, but - because the conversion is off - the number of appointments isn’t meeting the goal.  Without this information, the only coaching you can do is to tell Joe that he needs to see more people. But, with all the data, you see that the effort is there – the dials and discussions – but that effort isn’t leading to appointments.
   
   Instead of pointing that out, you ask Joe what he sees when he looks at the conversation ratio compared to the model in the success formula.  Assuming Joe sees the same thing as you, you are now in a position to ask further questions.  The key here is that both parties must agree as to what the problem is.
   
   
3. Demonstrate what you expect to be done: In this case, you would listen to Joe’s approach to converting conversations to appointments.  You would identify areas where he might need to change or improve his approach and you demonstrate what that would look/sound like.
   
   
4. Role–play: Now that you’ve demonstrated what you expect, you role-play various situations with Joe giving him several different responses.
   
   

3. Action step: It is critical that every coaching session ends with an action step.  An example of that would be to agree to a number of calls that Joe is going to make over a short period of time (i.e. by the end of the day or week) and then instruct him to report back to you (on a specific day and time) the outcome of his effort.

(Click here for 9 critical coaching skills)

STOP WASTING YOUR MONEY ON SALES TRAINING

Understand that this might be an ongoing process for Joe, and you may have to take a more disciplined approach to his coaching and execution of the skills he is struggling with.  At the end of the day, the key is to recognize that improvement is vital for sales growth.  You cannot expect to grow sales without improving effort and/or execution. If you want to improve sales, invest your money in developing your sales managers and stop wasting money on sales training until your managers can and will coach.

Additional Resources:

Demo online Sales Learning Module

Sales Managed Environment® Certification Module – Free Document

Okay… so I know you might be thinking, “What the heck does growing sales have to do with a peanut butter and jam sandwich… AND why jam and not jelly?”

Not “jelly” because… well, I really don’t like jelly. I grew up with my Mom’s homemade strawberry jam.  And, for years, I would just eat jam sandwiches because I didn’t like peanut butter. But then…

THE SALES GROWTH & PB&J CONNECTION

In 1973, I was offered a full scholarship to play football at Boston University. I accepted and signed my letter of intent but, later in the year, that coaching staff left BU and went to UConn and so I followed. 

As a senior offensive lineman at Hammonton High School in New Jersey, I was 6’4” and 170 lbs. on a heavy day.  I was instructed to consume more calories, lift more weights and ingest lots of protein to build muscle.  Peanut butter was now part of my dietary intake.  During the summer leading up to my freshman year at UConn, I would consume 10,000 calories a day.  That included breakfast and then 5 peanut butter and jam sandwiches between breakfast and lunch.  So, there you go.

As any peanut butter and jelly/jam aficionado knows, when making the perfect sandwich, you want to spread both ingredients all the way to the edges of the bread.  No bread uncovered.  You spread peanut butter on one slice, jam/jelly on the other slice and then smash the two slices together so that the combination of ingredients oozes out of the sides of the sandwich.  Then, just cut in half and eat!

The first time I heard the expression, “Let’s not spread our training program dollars around like peanut butter” was from George Emmons, then president of the community bank at Key Bank.  I asked him what he meant by that.  He said, “Tony, we have limited resources to get this done and so we have to be judicious in how we use our dollars.  We have markets like Seattle that are our highest potential growth market and then we have a market like Vermont.  Vermont is a great market for us - very strong - but we already enjoy sizable market share there, so our ROI isn’t going to be as great.   We need to invest our dollars where we get can get our greatest return.”

And there, my friend, is the connection between building a sales growth sales team and making a peanut butter and jam sandwich!

Now, on to growing sales …

“PEANUT BUTTER” AND YOUR SALESPEOPLE

When you think about your sales team, the collective book of business and the market pool, you have to be more intentional in your investment of time money and effort.  Not all of your salespeople are equal, not all of the clients represented in the book of business are equal and not all of the businesses/people/prospects that are available in the market place can bring you the same revenue, value or profit.  Given the variability, you cannot (and should not) spread your resources like peanut butter.

In my previous articles and blog posts, I’ve talked about the 80/20 principle - the simple concept that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.  You can substitute efforts with people - salespeople, client people, people in the market, etc.  Having said that, I highly recommend you follow Perry Marshalls process of the 80/20 of the 80/20.  Simply stated:  Do the 80/20 math again with the remaining salespeople, clients and prospects.  See below as an example of how to segment a revenue book.  (click here to read the detailed article about the 80/20 of the 80/20).

I believe the chart is easy enough to follow.  The key things here to recognize are:

1. About 96% of your results are coming from just 36% of your team
2. That 36% isn’t tapped out – the top 3 might be, but if you add admin and support staff, you can probably get them to double productivity – spend “peanut butter” differently for this group than for the rest of the group.
3. You have great opportunity/potential in the 2^nd group of 80/20 – the next 3 salespeople (next quintile). Lots of “peanut butter” (intentional coaching) here in training, development, management, marketing/lead generation resources.
4. The last quintile - the bottom 3 people - are not going to get you to the mountaintop based on their current productivity. Unless they are brand new, they not only get zero “peanut butter”, but they also get the opportunity for alternative employment.
5. Some of the people in the bottom quintile might be there because they are new to the organization, so don't’ abandon them; however, make sure you have a very intense on-boarding program to make sure they climb into the next quintile and beyond quickly. Lots of “peanut butter” here.
6. Your middle quintiles - salespeople in the middle 33% of the company - need to get lots of attention (“peanut butter”) for a short period of time because they have to demonstrate that they can actually produce the way you thought they would when you hired them… or they unfortunately validate that you made a hiring mistake.

WHEN TO USE A LOT OF “PEANUT BUTTER”

Follow this same process when analyzing the individual books of business for each salesperson.  Your salespeople should not be treating them all the same. The top 33% of the book brings over 90% of the revenue – treat them that way – with LOTS of “peanut butter”.

And, finally, when approaching the market place, use the information/data from the analysis above when looking at the individual books of business.  Identify the common characteristics in the top 33% of the book of business and then look for new opportunities that look like your top 33%. Stop spending time, money, effort and peanut butter pursuing anybody in the market place that doesn't (or have any chance to) look like your top 33% of your current clients.  (There us a great book on this concept, Selling to Zebras)

Additional Resources:

NO MORE HIRING MISTAKES - Hirebettersalespeople.com

In my series (see previous posts) regarding the constraints to growing sales, the two remaining topics are:

• Ineffective motivation of the sales team
• The “just enough is good enough” approach to hitting setting and hitting goals
  
  

THE POWER OF THE “RIGHT” MOTIVATION

Ineffective motivation of the sales team is not uncommon and it is the subject of one of the more frequent questions people ask me: “Tony, how do I keep my sales people motivated?”  My first response is normally a question in return:  “Do you know what motivates your people?”  The most common answer: “Well, uh, yeah, I think so.”  I cannot help myself when I ask, “Do you know or do you think you know?”  Their most common answer: “I think I know.”

With that in mind, how do you possibly motivate people when you just think you know what motivates them?

What we know about motivating salespeople is that it has changed over the years.  When we first started evaluating sales teams using the #1 Sales Evaluation Assessment – Objective Management Group Sales Evaluation and Impact Analysis – the findings told us that people were externally motivated.  Motivation was money and the things money can provide.  Today, however, we see a different set of results (Read this HBR article on motivating salespeople).

The current findings tell us that sales teams are highly motivated to succeed, but the source of motivation is internal rather than external.  They are motivated by a job well done. They want to be recognized for success and they are motivated by achieving their own personal standards for success and achievement.

I was 9 years old when I walked off the football field the very first time.  I had just finished practice and my dad was waiting on the sideline for me.  He asked me what I thought and I told him I loved it.  “Someday I’m going to go to college to play football.”  Dad asked me if I was sure and I said “yes.”  He then told me, “College football players are in great shape so, if you are going to play college football, you’ll have to be in great shape. Take off your helmet and shoulder pads and start running some laps.”  I followed his advice and I ran laps every night after practice to get in shape to play college football.  In February of 1973, I signed my letter of intent to go to the University of Connecticut to play football.

My dad - my manager - knew my goal and used that occasionally to keep me on track.  Occasionally, when I would fall off the training wagon, he would ask me if I still planned on playing college football.  I would always answer, “Sure!”  He would then say, “Well, I wasn’t sure. I haven’t seen you run or lift weights in a while.”  That’s all he needed to say.  Off I went.

When you know what motivates your people, you can then have the appropriate discussions to keep them on track.

“JUST ENOUGH” IS NEVER GOOD ENOUGH

“Just enough is good enough.” THIS MINDSET DRIVES ME CRAZY!  How do you know that this is your culture?

• Year over year growth is one of the metrics you use to determine if you are getting better
• Comparing one unit in your organization against another is the way you communicate to the teams about which ones are having success – stack ranking and comparing the rank of one team against the others as a way to explain, “If they can go from #22 to #15, then so can you!”
• Hitting sales goals on the backs of the few
• You have people on your sales team who - month after month, quarter after quarter and year over year - fail to hit their sales goal.
  • I don’t mean those that are at 99% one year and 101% the next and then 95% the third
  • I mean those that consistently perform in the low 90’s or high 80’s.
  • Those people that fail to perform still earn incentive comp, are not subject to any disciplined approach to improving skills or changing behaviors
  • There is never a discussion that sounds like, “What happened to the superstar sales person I thought I hired ____ number of years ago?”

I understand how this happens. There is so much pressure to just hit the numbers that, at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter how you hit the numbers; you just have to hit them.  But what are the long-term consequences of this sales environment?

• Turn over of really good producers that are tired of carrying the load
• Producers who are close to being really successful manage themselves downward instead of upward.
  • They witness that there are no consequences for failure
  • They become “at leasters” – “I’m not as good as Julie, but at least I’m not as bad as John.”
• Recruiting top talent is difficult because, when they talk to your top performers, they tell them that there will be a lot of pressure to perform because nothing happens to the slackers and the company depends on the top producers to make up the difference.
• When goal setting time comes around, people at the top get more heaped on them and those in the middle to bottom of pack argue that the goal you give them was never one they bought into.

SETTING THE BAR FOR SUCCESS

Bottom line is:

• Organizations have to have a mind-shift first about what it means to be successful in the organization.
• There have to be systems and processes in place to catch failure before it happens rather than when it actually happens. Failure never happens all at once. It’s gradual; however, instead of addressing the issues when they appear, managers put salespeople on “double secret probation.”
• The metrics used to determine success have to include diagnostics of the improvement of quintiles year over year. (See chart below for a snapshot of quintile performance.)  The idea is that when you take the snapshot next year, the numbers for each quintile have to be better than the previous quarter, year, etc.
• A willingness and commitment to set the bar higher for success and then hold people accountable to actually DOING the THINGS required to be successful rather than just looking at training data.

I will continue to explore and discuss these constraints to consistent and predictable sales growth.

Additional Resources:

The 80/20 of the 80/20 - What it means for your company and next steps

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