Simple Math: More Sales Training=More Sales=More Jobs.

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Thu, Jul 14, 2011

Jobs 0711 resized 600On Monday, The WSJ published the US Chamber of Commerce's June survey results on the outlook of 1400 business execs small business across the country.  And the answer is:  "No confidence", which of course (surprise of surprises...) was a real shock to me and I'm sure everyone else in the small business community.

On my way to work this morning, I switched back and forth between Bloomberg Radio and NPR's "Talk of The Nation's" program on the political muckraking over the August deadline to raise the deficit.   Greece is a disaster which I and "the boys on the bench" down at the general store in Vermont could probably buy for ten bucks.  Portugal and Spain are big question marks, and now Italy appears to be the next in the house of cards.  Jump to the U.S., and the debate is not how to belly up the bar and make the tough, highly unpopular entitlement cuts, it's about how much to raise the deficit ceiling.  I've really got to remember that line the next time that Visa calls.

As a result of all of this wonderfully reassuring news about the economy, it's pretty obvious why any small business manager would be reluctant to hire given such a confusing view of what's around the economic corner.  All of us too clearly remember the personal pain of just a couple of years ago, and there's no rationale by which any of us is going to let that happen again.

Although no one is rushing out to hire more people, what we are finding is that almost every CEO we run in to this year is asking, "How can I get more productivity out of my existing sales team?"  And yet, there's a simple but yet massively complex answer, and that is "Formalize your sales processes and drill everyone with more and more skills training".  The Bruins didn't win because they woke up one day and decided to go play some hockey.  Highly trained, detailed game plans, and performance-focused attitudes drove them to success, and the same rules apply to professional salespeople.   You want to sell more?  Then you need to plan better and train harder.  Simple rules, no excuses, no shortcuts.

As anyone knows who reads our newsletters and blogs, we firmly believe in sales process along with detailed quarterly plans.  With hundreds of companies of experience under our belt, we know by now that sales process adherence can dramtically improve quota performance by as much as 10%-25% in a very short time.  

We also focus a lot on actually slowing down the sales process at the beginning of the funnel in the "Discovery" phase since way too many salespeople still begin selling long before they actually discover pain, objectives and their prospect's buying processes.  That being said, once the sales process is past "Discovery" and moving ahead, there's clearly a time to close the deal.  And yet, here again, is a step in the selling process that many salespeople just are not comfortable with or simply think that the closing process is easy, and... "of course, I know how to do that".  Remember the Bruins.  They won because no one on the team took anything for granted.  Why should we treat our sales training any differently?

Factoids:
1.  Most B2B sales close after the 6th call/email/presentation
2.  Most B2B salespeople give up after the 4th calls
3.  25% of salespeople actually never ask for the order.

So, although we love to talk about the adoption of sales processes and we spend a whole bunch of time at the top of the funnel, recently, we're starting to concentrate more at the narrow tip at the end of the funnel and realize that the skills levels, the practice sessions and the role playing drills about closing leave a lot to be improved on. 

As you think through whether you should call your salespeople together for a summer tuneup for the big push to the end of the year, ask yourself...

1.  What are the three best closing techniques for the business?
2.  How would I rank each of my salespeople in closing effectiveness?
2.  What's in our sales toolbox for updated closing tools?
3.  When's the last time we collaborated on a case study about closing skills?
4.  When's the last time we did formal role playing around closing tactics?

We're in the process of doing more research this summer on closing processes, so I would be very interested in your comments.  In the meantime, here's a quick presentation on a few closing techniques and some simple Tips that you might find useful.

The more deals we close, the more opportunities will follow, the more jobs will be created, and the faster this stalled economy will improve.  Certainly beats all of the whining and kicking the can down the road that's coming out of of both parties in Washington.

In the meantime...Good Selling !
Jack
Head Coach
Linked In and Sales 

Check out our upcoming October Sales Management Boot Camp.

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, sales management training, selling skills, sales optomization, Sales quota, sales training, small business management