Q2: The Pivot Point

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Wed, May 12, 2010

Q2-The Perfect Balance Point
Four months into the year is sufficient time to figure out and make decisions on what’s working and what’s not. With your budget and quotas firmly anchored down into the hearts and souls of every salesperson, every lead generator in marketing and every business development manager out scouring the landscape for new deals and new partners, it’s the perfect time of year to make decisions and firm up your plans for the second half.

The Three P’s: People, Process & Plan:
People

I think that I’m pretty good at hiring people having made way too many mistakes in the past, but now bringing the process down to serious screening, personality testing, and a series of interviewing techniques which include all of my managers on our side of the table and the candidate in a series of multiple interviews including the final one which always includes their spouse.

The results of this intense process have been greatly improved retention and performance, but I still make a few mistakes. We’ve done some data analysis on this recently and have now identified “The Rule of 6 & 8?. It typically takes 6 to 8 weeks to realize that you may have made a mistake on a new sales hire, but typically, it takes most managers 6 to 8 months to make the change and get rid of them. In the meantime, those managers who do not pull the plug have created a major hole in their financial plans and their quota assignments in addition to creating morale problems internally and potentially externally with disappointed customers and prospects.

Today, we have a different rule, which is that every sales manager can afford only one non- performing salesperson that they’re going to mentor, coach, and intensively work with to be able to move them from a C/B- player to either a B+ or an A. Only one salesperson on a PIP; not two. If it’s two, then the manager is bifurcating their own time such that there’s just not enough manager time to go around; thereby diluting the impact with the rest of the salespeople for whom they’re responsible. Much better to let someone go now when you still have time to recover and make an impact with a new hire before the end of the year rather than hoping against hope that your weak performers are going to get better. Hope is not a strategy in sales planning, and it absolutely never works with weak performers without a major commitment to a massive amount of management and mentoring time.

Process

When the quarter ends, it’s a great time of the year to tweak up your sales process and the corresponding sales and marketing tools that go into that process. Plan now for a July process review session and continue to refine your tools and best practices that have worked for the most successful salespeople over the past quarter or two. Also, as a team, take a hard look in July at each of the steps in your process and make sure that every metric is correct. Some may have drifted off and need to be recalibrated into your CRM.

Plan

Still just a bit early, but during the next few weeks remind your salespeople that they’ll need to deliver detailed 30-60-90 day plans for their territories or their SBUs and for all of their key accounts during the second week of July. Yes, I know that’s often vacation week, so all the more reason you need to get out ahead of this. The customer’s calendar doesn’t stop, it just changes. Sales cycles don’t collapse during the summer, they just get stretched out, which is the exact reason that your Q3 planning process and your skills training requirements need to be laid out now such that there are no surprises.

You also should be asking and assessing what skills training programs you want to put on during a mid summer sales meeting. Do your people need battlefield training in objection handling, ROI assessments, discovery process or some other skill? Line up someone now to come in and do dedicated training along while creating a couple of real life case studies that your people will need to prepare for and present at the July meeting. Both professional athletes and the Navy’s Seals are always being professionally trained and retrained. There’s no reason that you shouldn’t be doing the same with your salespeople.

Just a couple of ideas to perhaps hone your skills and at least to kick around in your head this week as you’re thinking about your review meetings next week with your salespeople.

Talk soon, and in the meantime, Good Selling!

Jack