how to develop a successful sales team - victor koitchev
TRANSCRIPT
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The 3 Main Challenges of Managing a Sales Team
• Clear performance goals, rules and metrics
Sales professionals are often ambitious and driven, and they value freedom and independence in their jobs. However, their motivation can plummet if you don't make your expectations and systematics clear, or if you fail to communicate performance goals and metrics.
• Less Micromanagement
Some salespeople may want you to give them high-level objectives, but not to tell them how to do their jobs, especially if you lack sales experience. So, you're likely to clash with people if you try to micromanage them.
• Team cohesiveness
Effective sales professionals can be naturally competitive, and team unity and morale can suffer if you don't handle this appropriately.
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HOW TO MANAGE A SUCCESSFUL SALES TEAM
1. Hire Smart2. Lead by Example - "Walk the Talk„3. Grant Autonomy4. Understand Your People's Personalities5. Tailor Rewards and Motivators6. Effective Performance Goals7. Create Competition8. Recognize Achievements9. Become a Coach or Mentor
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1. Hire Smart
Effective sales managers are committed to hiring the best talent available. If you want the best, hire the best, and save loads of time and money on training while protecting yourself from failure six months down the road. Look for individuals with social goals that are already more aligned with your organizational goals.
When considering the personal qualities that make a good salesperson, you should look for:
• resilience - someone who bounces back from rejection• urgency - a competitive character who wants to get on with things• assertiveness - a person who makes their point firmly but without
aggression• sociability - someone who's friendly and bonds well with others• enthusiasm - someone who really wants to sell your products• self-motivation - someone with the initiative, drive and ambition to
find and close deals for you
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2. Lead by Example – Walk the Talk
This means doing what you say, when you say it.
Think about the behaviors or habits that you want to encourage, and make sure that you demonstrate these regularly.
For example:
• If you ask a co-worker to do something, make sure you'd be willing to do it yourself.
• If you implement new rules for the office, then follow those rules just as closely as you expect everyone else to follow them. If the new rule is "no personal calls at work," then don't talk to your spouse at work.
• Look closely at your own behavior. If you criticize people for interrupting, but you constantly do it yourself, you need to fix this.
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3. Grant Autonomy
• It may be that your sales team members don't want – or need – you to tell them how to make a sale. However, they do need you to set specific goals, and to provide support when they need it.
• Give your team members the autonomy they need to perform at their best.
• Be available for those who do need further guidance, and let people know that your door is always open if they need more support.
• Let them do what they do best. If you have employees who are not great at details and writing proposals but they're great at selling, then let them sell. Find someone else to compensate in some way to support them on the detail.
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4. Understand Your People's Personalities
• To manage your team members effectively, make sure that you understand their individual strengths. This understanding will help you to customize your motivation and reward strategies.
• What are their greatest strengths and weaknesses? What motivators have worked for them in the past? And what do they care most about now?
• Consider asking your team members to complete personality and strengths tests, and use the results to start creating a "personality profile" for each person. You can then use these profiles to assign people tasks that play to their strengths, and you can identify and address any important weaknesses.
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5. Tailor Rewards and Motivators
• Each of your team members is unique, and they're likely to be motivated by different things. One person might crave recognition from top leaders in the organization, while another might prefer an extra day off to spend time with their family.
• Look at the personality profiles that you created in the last step, and talk to your team members individually to find out what they value.
• Possible motivators could include the following: bonus and commission checks, paid time off, further training, or advanced career development, paid attendance at an upcoming trade conference, small gifts, new leads, or a new territory.
• Finally, keep things simple. Ask each person on your team what he or she wants most. What they say might surprise you!
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6. Set Effective Performance Goals
• Set smart goals, and link them to each person's specific motivators.
• Your team will have weekly, monthly, or quarterly targets to meet. Keep in mind that activity-based goals can be just as effective.
• For example, closing four new deals per month could be a shared goal in your organization. While this can be a useful target, it might encourage sales reps to harass prospects at the end of the month if they haven't achieved it. This could damage your company's reputation, and it may lead to lost opportunities.
• Instead, consider setting activity-based goals, such as making a certain number of cold calls each day, or scheduling a set number of appointments each week. This takes away the pressure to make the sale, and it gives team members the freedom they may need to build positive, long-term relationships with clients.
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7. Create Competition
• Take advantage of your team members' natural competitiveness, and encourage healthy competition as a way to engage your people, boost morale, and make work more fun.
• Focus the contest on a strategic business goal that you all need to meet. Devote a wall in the office to the competition, and post news about wins, display real-time updates and standings, and celebrate achievements.
• To make the competition interesting and valuable, offer a small prize or reward. Ask your team members what they would like to receive, or use your own judgment to come up with something creative.
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8. Recognize Achievements
• One of the best ways to motivate your sales team members is to recognize their achievements on a regular basis.
• Praising your people could be as simple as giving a "high five" when they reach their goals, or pinning up a handwritten note on a "bragging wall" in the main conference room.
• Recognition from you is a powerful motivator, but it can be equally as valuable when it comes from colleagues. Ask your people to praise their colleagues, and to notify you when they see them achieve a win. This way, you can collectively recognize their efforts, which will build morale and strengthen relationships.
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9. Become a Coach or Mentor
• Analyzing and reporting on your team's performance metrics is likely to be one of your top priorities, but you're also there to encourage your people to develop themselves professionally.
• To become an effective coach or mentor, spend one-on-one time with the people who need your assistance most. Look over their last performance review, and ask them open-ended questions to find out which areas they need to work on. List the top skills that they need to improve, and help them access the training they need to do this.
• Focus on improving one skill every month or quarter. Provide regular feedback on each person's progress, and celebrate successes, no matter how small.
• Pair a low-performing salesperson with someone who performs particularly well. This can create an invaluable learning opportunity for both individuals – the low-performer will learn sales skills directly, and the high-performer will learn management and leadership skills.
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Weekly 1-on-1 checklist
• Go over numbers and percentage to goal - for the current month, and two months out.
• Review last week's goals.• Discuss three major goals the rep has for the upcoming week.• Discuss three new clients the rep will connect this week.• Ask which three clients will receive a long-term proposal.• Look at weekly projected numbers and compare them with their
monthly budget planners.• Check accounts receivables. Look for past-due money and potential
problems.• If time permits, brainstorm on specific accounts.
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“If I had to give just one piece of advice, to anyone, in any career, it would be this: your integrity is everything.
It’s at the core of who you are as a person. It builds trust, and trust is nearly impossible to regain, in any relationship, once it’s lost.
Any day of the week, give me the “solid” performer who oozes integrity over the “rock star” performer who believes the end justifies the means.
What I try to remember: your integrity is your brand … and just like brands in the business world, your individual brand takes years to build and seconds to destroy.
Never Cut Corners. Your integrity is everything”
Lowell McAdamCEO at Verizon
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The only easy day was yesterday!
Victor [email protected]
I describe myself as a tech sales multi-specialist with considerable across-the-industries know-how, strong commitment and integrity, endurance and passion for customers, with an “uplift others” sense of leadership and a positive life attitude that comes from the heart.
“Never Cut Corners. Your integrity is everything!”