I had the pleasure on Monday of sitting through 12 account reviews at one of our customers. Solid experienced sales people, a brand name Boston-based company, established management-all good. As one of the guys pointed out during his review of his ytd performance, "Sales cures all ills", and, of course he's correct, but...
The problem with adages and general statements like "a rising tide lifts all boats", and "sales cures all ills", is that, although they may be reflective of the stirrings of what appears to be a better economy, they can also mask fundamental flaws within a sales organization that is not process, tools and metrics based. The fact that the management of most companies-coming off a pretty solid Q1-feels a bit more confident in their outlook for the year, should not slow down what needs to be a relentless drive on the part of all of us as managers to improve the productivity of our sales reps. In order to do that, in our experience, we find that the best-of-class sales managers...
- get their fingers very dirty, and extremely hands-on
- bolt together formal sales processes with formal tools and metrics
- travel 30-50% of their time in the field...even in an online world
- train consistenly every single month with formal training sessions
To put teeth into a few of the other sales adages that we frequently hear, let's think about the following:
Sales is about Blocking & Tackling
When we hear this phrase, "blocking & tackling" used in Sales applications, all of us immediately think about football teams with images of coaches, clipboards in hand, holding scrimmages and post-game chalkboard training sessions held consistently every single week.
Question #1:
How many hours do you or your sales management spend coaching your players every month?
Sales is about More Times at Bat
Simply, can't hit home runs unless you're getting up to bat. Of course, in order to get up to bat in Sales, you need to receive the required number of MQLs.
Question #2:
Do you have weekly team and individual agreed-on metrics on converting MQL to SQLs between your marketing and sales teams? What's the percentage of sales-generated compared to marketing-generated leads that you require for your sales team? Only by thinking like this, are you going to get more times at bat. Baseball is all about talent, training and relentless attention to the metrics. No difference in the game of Sales.
Sales is More Feet on the Street
This adage doesn't really apply anymore in the true reality of the "street" since the street today might be a digital superhighway. The intent is the same, however. What's the math of sales hires to closed sales? What's the ramp time from onboarding to first sale and from that to full ramp speed (consistently 1/12 of the annual quota). Only when you know these and similar metrics should you be adding feet on the street and ears to the phone and fingers to the keyboards. Today's sales environment is all about Performance & Productivity.
Question #3:
Do you, do your salesguys, do your Finance people have these metrics burned into their operating DNA? They must! Gone are the days of sprinkling more salespeople into a territory just to see what happens.
Equally gone are old adages about Sales...because "Hope is not a strategy"
Have a great weekend!
Keep Selling! Keep Running! Keep Challenging! Keep Learning!
