SellingSherpa

B2B Sales Best Practices

Sales Manager Survival Guide (Book Summary)

Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons from Sales’ Front-lines by David Brock

INTRODUCTION

  • Front-line sales management is the point where we translate strategies, ideas, programs into tactical day to day execution.

PART ONE THE NEW SALES MANAGER

1 SO NOW YOU ARE A NEW SALES MANAGER. WHAT’S DIFFERENT?

2 YOUR FIRST 30 DAYS: SLOW DOWN, DON’T MOVE TOO FAST

  • The most important thing for a new manager to do — regardless of the situation — is to do nothing! No, I don’t really mean do nothing. I mean don’t rush into changing things.
  • The most critical things you need to do in your first 30 days as a new manager is figure out what drives your people, how they work, what’s going on, how things get done, what people think, why the organization is where it is, and where you can have the biggest impact on the people and organization.
  • Visit or talk to 30 customers, prospects, past customers.

3 30-60 DAYS: FIRST, YOUR PEOPLE

  • You’re starting to hold pipeline reviews, deal reviews, territory reviews, and one-on-ones. You are, hopefully, spending time with your people calling on customers, helping them move deals forward.
  • Help always comes in the form of coaching not telling.
  • Before you do anything, if you can, sit down with your manager. Use her as a sounding board for your impressions and ideas.

4 30-60 DAYS: YOUR COMPANY/SALES ORGANIZATION

  • As a front-line sales manager, the majority of your time must be spent working with your people, coaching them, developing them, helping them develop stronger deal strategies, making key customers calls with them.

5 30-60 DAYS: PROCESSES, SYSTEMS, TOOLS, AND METRICS

  • Sales process is probably the single most powerful element for driving sales effectiveness, both at an individual and organizational level. The sales process is very closely tied to your Deal/Opportunity Management and Pipeline Management Processes.
  • The most important metrics for you and your team are the leading metrics. It’s understanding: Are you doing enough (quantity) of the right things (quality) to achieve the outcomes and goals you have (quota performance).
  • I have only two sets of sales metrics I track myself and my people on: The number of first customer “meetings “(virtually all are phone calls) they make each week and their pipeline health.

6 WARNING! DO YOU ALSO HAVE A PERSONAL TERRITORY?

7 60-90 DAYS: THE HONEYMOON IS OVER. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY?

  • You need to be spending an absolute minimum of 50 % of your time with your people. This includes going out into the field, visiting customers.
  • The next 25 % of your time will be spent getting things done for your people, promoting their accomplishments, removing barriers, and protecting them.
  • Sales-related activities [include:] preparing/researching, making customer calls/meetings, following up on those meetings)
  • THE NEXT 25 % OF YOUR TIME This quarter of your time is for yourself and your manager. Some of this 25 % of your time is set aside for you to think.
  • THE FIFTH 25 % OF YOUR TIME [is for] reports, forms, other things you have to do. Do this after business hours!
  • THE FINAL 25 % OF YOUR TIME – This is probably the second most important time block. It’s time to think and reflect.
  • AVOID KNEE JERKS: There is always time to think, consider, evaluate — not endlessly, but appropriately.
  • If you are constantly changing, you don’t know what you are doing. People want to be led. They want leaders who are certain of what needs to be done, who have the courage to stick to something, learning, tuning, and improving.

8 LEADING YOUR FORMER PEERS

  • Nothing we ever do as leaders should be directed at the person, who salespeople are as human beings. The only thing we can and should focus on is their performance in the job.

PART TWO COACHING IS YOUR JOB

9 WHAT’S ALL THIS TALK ABOUT COACHING? I’M A MANAGER!!

  • The most effective coaching takes the form of helping your people think, not solving their problems for them.
  • Coaching is the highest leverage activity sales managers have in driving the performance of their team,

10 COACHING AND BEING COACHED

  • Coaching is a two-way exchange, it is a dialogue, a conversation focused on shared discovery and learning.
  • As coaches, if we aren’t prepared to listen, learn, and develop ourselves, we will never be as effective as we might be.

11 COACHING AND TRAINING: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

  • Training can have a great impact in developing the capabilities of the team — but management has to be engaged, not only in determining what is being taught, but by participating in the classes, and doing ongoing coaching reinforcement afterwards.
  • If managers expect their people to take the courses, they need to take the course as well — setting a powerful leadership example.
  • Training and coaching are important. One does not replace the other; both are needed. And each needs to reinforce the other.

12 HOW DO YOU COACH?

  • Non-directive coaching focuses on helping your people think, analyze, and figure things out for themselves. Directive coaching involves telling your people what they should be doing. When you have the option, you should almost always choose non-directive coaching.
  • Types of questions:
    • QUESTIONS FOR CLARIFICATION What do you mean by….?
    • QUESTIONS PROBING PURPOSE What is the purpose of _____?
    • QUESTIONS PROBING REASONS AND EVIDENCE What would be an example?
    • QUESTIONS PROBING VIEWPOINT AND PERSPECTIVES What effect would that have? What is an alternative?
    • QUESTIONS PROBING IMPLICATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES How can we find out?
    • QUESTIONS ABOUT QUESTIONS What does that mean?
    • QUESTIONS THAT PROBE CONCEPTS What is the main idea we are dealing with?
    • QUESTIONS THAT PROBE INFERENCE AND INTERPRETATIONS What conclusions are we coming to about _____?
  • Times when directive coaching is more appropriate or, in fact, necessary:
    • When there is a real need for speed in addressing a specific issue.
    • When there can be no chance of risk or failure.
    • When there’s no debate, all the decisions have been made.
    • When an issue is so critical it’s necessary for you to maintain full control and responsibility.
    • When the person has neither the capability nor the willingness to solve the problem themselves.
  • A lot of this coaching will be informal — catch someone doing something right and let them know immediately.
  • You will, also, be integrating coaching into your reviews (deal, pipeline, calls, and others,) and your one-on-ones.

13 HOW DO WE FIND TIME TO COACH OUR SALESPEOPLE?

  • Effective sales leaders incorporate coaching into their daily business activities [such as] deal reviews, pipeline/forecast reviews, call reviews, territory, one-on-ones,
  • As sales managers, we spend our days talking to salespeople about prospecting, sales calls, deals, pipelines, forecasts, territory and account plans.

14 ARE YOU COACHABLE? IF YOU AREN’T, YOU WON’T MAKE IT!

15 COACHING TO CLOSE PERFORMANCE GAPS, COACHING FOR CONTINUED IMPROVEMENT

  • In closing performance gaps, we may have to work on skill development. [And,] the reality is you can only focus your coaching on one or two things at a time.

16 COACHING A, B, C PLAYERS

  • You are probably managing a team of 8-12 people. There is no excuse for not investing time in each one.
  • One of the biggest challenges B players face is consistency of execution.

17 WHAT DOES THE HEISENBERG UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE HAVE TO DO WITH SALES LEADERSHIP?

18 GUIDELINES FOR GIVING AND RECEIVING FEEDBACK

  • As leaders, the most important gift you can provide your people is powerful feedback.
  • Feedback is a two-way street. We should actively seek feedback from our people, peers, managers, and others we work with.
  • The inability to accept feedback is probably the most limiting thing we face in our personal and professional development.
  • Focus feedback on
    • behavior rather than the person.
    • observations rather than inferences.
    • description rather than judgment.
    • descriptions of behavior which are in terms of “more or less “rather than in terms of “either/or.”
    • behavior related to a specific situation
    • the sharing of ideas and information rather than on giving advice.
    • exploration of alternatives rather than answers or solutions.
    • the value it may provide for the recipient, rather than the value or “release “it provides the person giving the feedback.
    • the amount of information that the person receiving it can use, rather than on the amount that you have which you might like to give.
    • time and place so that personal data can be shared at appropriate times.
    • what is said rather than why it is said.

19 THE SECRET TO EFFECTIVE COACHING

  • You have to care! You have to believe in your people more than they believe in themselves!

PART THREE: REVIEWS—Accelerate Your Coaching Impact!

20 THE REVIEW PROCESS: KILLING TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE

  • The major types of reviews we need to conduct:
    • Deal/Opportunity
    • Pipeline/Forecast
    • Sales Call
    • Account/Territory
    • One-on-ones
    • Prospecting
    • QBRs
  • Most people tend to conduct pipeline reviews far too frequently.
  • [For] account or territory reviews, quarterly or sometimes even a semiannual cadence is sufficient

21 THE BASICS: FUNDAMENTALS OF THE REVIEW

  • [One of the] biggest problem with reviews is that we fail to establish and agree on action plan. We don’t identify: What do we do next? By what date? What is the anticipated outcome? Who is responsible?

22 DEAL REVIEWS

  • Most deal reviews can be accomplished in about 20-30 minutes. [Strive to] understand what it takes to win:
    • The compelling business problem for the buyer
    • Are there risks?
    • What are the next actions the salesperson needs to take in executing that strategy?
    • where the buyer is in their buying process
    • their decision-making process
    • the competition
    • Projected deal value
    • Whether the target close date is reasonable or achievable.
  • If you don’t have a sales process, or people aren’t using it, you will find it virtually impossible to manage performance.
  • “Until it comes directly from the customer’s mouth, it’s not fact.”
  • MOVING FORWARD: WHAT DO WE DO NEXT? This is where we want to spend most of the time in the review.
  • As you are completing the Discovery Stage and moving to the Proposing Stage, there are a series of validation activities, for example:
    • 1. Reconfirming priorities and needs.
    • 2. Testing aspects of our solution to get their reaction on how well it meets their needs.
    • 3. Demonstrating potential solutions both to show how we meet needs and to confirm their views about the solution.
    • 4. Making specific value based solution recommendations.
    • 5. Validating the business case, our value proposition, and differentiation.
    • 6. Understanding their attitudes about our solution versus the alternatives they may be considering.
  • “I need to meet with ________ by this date _________, to accomplish these things _________ ”
  • It’s important to follow up with the salesperson as they execute the next steps.
  • OTHER IMPORTANT DEAL REVIEW ISSUES
    • 1. Each week choose a different deal to review with the salesperson.
    • 2. Make sure you choose deals in different stages of the sales process.
    • Doing deal reviews for deals in the qualifying and discovery stages give you the most flexibility in brainstorming alternatives and developing strong deal strategies.

23 PIPELINE REVIEWS

  • Most pipeline reviews turn into deal reviews
  • Pipeline reviews are conducted too frequently.
  • In most cases, reviewing individual pipelines with each salesperson should take no more than 15 minutes.
  • We have only 3 key objectives in pipeline reviews:
    • Assure we have high pipeline integrity.
    • Assure we have the right pipeline shape/volume.
    • Assure we have the right velocity/flow.
  • Pipeline integrity issues can usually be seen though some sort of stage/closing date misalignment, deals that have been in cycle too long or too little, deals that haven’t moved.
  • If a salesperson has a $ 1 million quota, with an average deal size of $ 100K, he will need to close ten deals to make his quota. If his win rate is 25 %, on an annualized basis, his healthy pipeline needs to have $ 4M worth of deals, roughly a total of 40 deals.
  • I like looking at average time in each sales process stage, and the flow from stage-to-stage.
  • When you have pipeline problems, you can’t fix them by focusing on the pipeline. Let me explain myself. There are only five problems you will ever have with the pipeline:
    • Integrity
    • Volume
    • Velocity
    • Win Rate
    • Average Deal Size.
  • Each deal should be reviewed individually with the salesperson when committing something to the forecast.
  • You cannot have a high integrity pipeline without having a strong sales process that your people are using.

24 CALL REVIEWS

  • In planning a call, the salesperson needs to ask:
    • What are their goals and objectives for the call?
    • What are the goals and objectives the customer may have for the call?
    • Do we have the right people participating in the call?
    • What commitments or actions do they want to derive from the call?
    • What value are we creating for the customer in the call?
    • Particularly for very important meetings, ask the salesperson if they have shared and agreed upon an agenda with the customer.
  • Conduct post-call reviews

25 ONE-ON-ONES

  • The one-on-one is not a deal, pipeline, or any other kind of review.
  • Make sure that no more than two weeks pass without a one-on-one.
  • Focus my one-on-ones on two specific things: looking at how your people are planning and spending their time, and “taking their temperature.”
  • Are they allocating and blocking specific time periods for prospecting? Are they blocking time to research and prepare for key meetings, deals, prospecting?
  • I like to look at people’s calendars for the next two weeks. They should have these two weeks relatively well planned and structured — including some unscheduled time.

26 ACCOUNT AND TERRITORY PLANNING

  • The account or territory plan is actually all about creating a structured prospecting plan.
  • They are mapping where they’ve done business, the relationships they have. More importantly, they are identifying divisions, business units, and functions where they have done little or no business. They are developing plans to get introduced to key people within those organizations, learn more about them, and find opportunities where they might start solving problems.
  • Don’t give the salespeople a blind challenge such as, “Tell me what you are doing to expand your relationships and grow the business.” Nothing will get done. Focus their planning on two to three key initiatives or priorities.
  • Are they thinking big enough? Part of our goal with account and territory planning is to get them out of the rut of what they do every day.
  • Do they have a specific plan with which to engage these people?
  • At the end of the review the salesperson has identified specific activities and the schedule for accomplishing them.
  • I tend to favor quarterly meetings and updates.

27 TEAM MEETINGS

  • Team meetings are very powerful for sharing the same information across the whole team [and for] training and development.
  • Every team meeting must have specific objectives and an agenda. This needs to be published in advance.
  • Ideas:
    • Use the team meeting as an objection-handling clinic.
    • Consider bringing in a guest speaker
  • As a rule, I generally don’t like to include reviews in team meetings.
  • I tend to favor no more than one team meeting a month.
  • [Case Study] Tory Hornsby’s approach to team meetings:
    • Every day, we devote the first 45 minutes to sales training.
    • Starts with the team celebrating their accomplishments of the previous day
    • Followed in scrum-like fashion by each salesperson taking about one minute outlining their goals for the day.
    • The remaining 30 minutes is spent training. They rotate the responsibility. “We have to reinforce every new thing for 4 weeks until people have internalized what we are trying to get them to learn.”

PART FOUR: RECRUITING, INTERVIEWING, HIRING AND ONBOARDING

28 BUILDING A TEAM

29 A FRIGHTENING LOOK AT “THE COST OF A SALESPERSON ”

30 RECRUITING: FINDING THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST

  • Make a bad hire and you stand to lose millions of dollars in business to your competition or in opportunity costs.
  • Two key components to recruiting the right candidates to fill your open jobs:
    • 1. Having a clear picture of your ideal candidate.
    • 2. Reducing the time required to identify ideal candidates.
  • The ideal candidate profile has a couple of elements:
    • A clear description of the role, and the responsibilities a person in that role must fulfill.
    • A clear definition of the competencies, experiences, attitudes, behaviors, and values you require.
  • Job descriptions and sales competency models aren’t just used for recruiting. They are also very powerful tools for helping you coach and develop your people.
  • Experienced leaders are always looking for talent. Long before they have positions open, they are on the hunt for “A candidates “for each key role in their organizations
  • Never delegate the phone screening interview. Always conduct it yourself. Again, you are the best person to know what you are looking for, so take the time to conduct good screening interviews.
  • SALES COMPETENCY MODEL
  • [The sales competency model is] a tool you can use to help recruit the right people, to make sure they have developed the right skills and capabilities at the conclusion of their onboarding. Its utility doesn’t stop there. It can be used to help in the development of your people.
  • Competencies:
    • 1. Behaviors and Attitudes
    • 2. Industry and Market Knowledge
    • 3. Customer Intimacy and Knowledge
    • 4. Understanding of Your Own Products and Solutions
    • 5. Understanding How to Get Things Done Within the Company
    • 6. General Business Knowledge
    • 7. Ability to Provide Insights to Customers
    • 8. Value Creation, Communication, and Delivery
    • 9. Sales Process, Planning, and Execution
    • 10. General Selling Skills
  • With each category is drill down and describe specific characteristics, skills, experiences, attitudes, behaviors that are important for the role.
  • Behaviors and Attitudes Category, you may want to consider things like: Time focused; Critical thinking, problem-solving skills; Growth oriented mindset; Passion, energy, enthusiasm; Professional appearance, conduct, demeanor; Can do, get it done; Follow through/ability to complete things; Technical aptitude, comfort with technology discussions; Takes responsibility, personal accountability; Cognitive capability; Curiosity; Problem solving orientation; Team orientation; Interested in other people and their success; Listening skills; Strong self-confidence and self-image; Comfort in talking about money; Requires minimal management supervision, requires minimal direction; Able to deal with conflict and confrontation; Comfortable with ambiguity; Strong ethical foundation, trustworthy; Coachable and value coaching; Attitude to continuous learning; Driven to accomplishment, success oriented; Driven to be successful; Focused on own self-improvement and development; Engaging; Relentless communicator; Able to get commitments; Detail oriented; Delivers on commitments made; Self-driven; Able to deal with rejection; Out of the box thinker; Ability to navigate organizations; Gives and receives feedback
  • [Assess competencies on a 5-point scale from:] 1 = Basic capabilities [to] 5 = Able to teach/coach/mentor others in this competency.
  • No individual will ever meet your “perfect“ picture across all elements.
  • Keep updating [your sales competency model]! The extraordinary skills of today become table stakes tomorrow.

32 INTERVIEWING AND HIRING

  • We want to design this process with two objectives in mind: Is the candidate a good fit for our organization, and is the candidate likely to perform at the level expected?
  • You will want to assess the research the candidate has done to prepare for the interview.
    • Did they actually read the materials you’ve sent?
    • Have they researched the company on the Web?
    • Have they looked at your customers, markets, competitors?
    • Have they looked at your business strategies, products/solutions, and company performance?
    • What research did they do on the individuals they will be meeting with?
  • Sometimes, I’ve startled candidates by simply asking them to give me their list of questions
  • Do they push back and challenge, or do they rollover and seek only to please and tell you what they think you want to hear?
  • HOW DO THEY REACT UNDER PRESSURE OR WHEN CONFRONTED WITH A DIFFICULT SITUATION OR DIFFICULT FEEDBACK
  • Consider having them re-do the role play or presentation, so you can see how they may have incorporated the feedback you provided.
  • I never look at the results of assessments until after the interviews (or at least the initial round) have been completed. This way, I can use the results of the assessments to reflect on what we discovered in the interview process. Sometimes they help me understand something I saw in the interview process, but couldn’t put my finger on.
  • When I talk to references, rather than the classic “What are their strengths and weaknesses, “I tend to ask about their observations of the candidate in certain situations. I tend to ask, “When you observed Amanda in this kind of situation … How did she handle it?”

33 ONBOARDING

  • The average time for a salesperson to get to full productivity is ten months. For more complex products/solutions it may take more than a year.
  • In looking at onboarding, there are a number of things the new salesperson has to learn as soon as possible:
    • The target customers and territory.
    • Your products and solutions.
    • Your sales process, how you engage customers, how you create great customer experiences.
    • Your value proposition, how you create, communicate and deliver unique value to your customers.
    • What are the sales enablement systems, tools, programs available to help them sell? How to use them?
    • The company and how to get things done within the company. The company strategies, priorities, values, and how it wants to be perceived by its customers. What’s the company’s culture, how do you work together?  
    • Your specific expectations of them and their performance. How they will be evaluated? Consequences of poor evaluations?
    • What are the best practices in each area — prospecting, deal development, call planning/execution, territory/account management? How do we get the people started doing the right things in the right way from day 1?
    • What happens when they have problems and need help? Where to they go for answers, how do they get help?
  • Your customers are concerned about their business opportunities and challenges. Helping the new salesperson understand these and how your solutions help the customer address these is critical.
  • Your sales process represents your best practices in finding, qualifying, and engaging customers.
  • Most importantly, the new salesperson needs to know how to get things done within the company. Where to go to for presales support, proposing and bidding, pricing and proposals. How do orders get entered, what about contracts, credit checks?
  • If you have the luxury, they should be able to spend a few weeks, or more, just learning without having to start calling on customers at all. If you can, have them shadow a top performer for a week or two, so they can see how that person works, how he engages the customers, how he gets things done within the organization. You may want to assign the salesperson a pseudo-mentor. This would be a high-performing peer the new salesperson can go to for advice and help during their first 3-6 months.

34 ATTRITION IS A LEADERSHIP PROBLEM!

  • [Reasons for] voluntary attrition:
    • 1. They see no future for themselves in their current roles/organization.
    • 2. They see no loyalty from the company to its employees.
    • 3. Management has unrealistic expectations
    • 4. The company isn’t doing “exciting things.” Being “exciting “means the company is continuously learning, improving, innovating, changing.
    • 5. They aren’t learning anything:
    • 6. They can get more money someplace else. This is the excuse that’s given far too often.
  • Train managers on recruiting/hiring, performance management, development planning, coaching, and dealing with problem employees.

PART FIVE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

35 MANAGING AND EVALUATING PERFORMANCE

36 SETTING PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS

  • We have to look at performance across all dimensions of behaviors, attitudes, what their job is, how we expect them to do it, and the results we expect.

37 PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

  • Generally, I like to have the salesperson present their own self-assessment first.

38 PROBLEM PERFORMANCE

  • Major performance problems are obvious to everyone in the organization. Managers are expected to address these problems, If you aren’t, if you are avoiding the issue, you become the problem performer yourself.
  • Addressing poor performance isn’t about the person. It’s simply about their ability to perform as expected in the job.
  • Bad performance has to be addressed immediately. The first thing to assess is: “What’s driving or causing the bad performance?” [Is it] lack of knowledge, poor skills, poor execution, not leveraging systems/processes or tools effectively. More complex issues are attitudinal and behavioral issues?

39 THE MEASURED MILE

  • If no one believes there can be a successful outcome to the performance improvement plan, isn’t everyone better off calling it quits upfront?
  • Don’t focus only on the end goals, but define the interim metrics.
  • You will have to meet with the salesperson weekly to track progress against the goals.

40 ON TERMINATIONS

  • Finally, perhaps a few days later, conduct a “loss review “just for yourself. Think back on the history. Did you make a bad hiring decision? Did you not see performance problems early enough?

PART SIX: TACTICAL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT—MANAGING THE BUSINESS WEEK TO WEEK, QUARTER TO QUARTER

41 BUSINESS MANAGEMENT IS IMPORTANT: THE DAY-TO-DAY BUSINESS OF MANAGING THE SALES TEAM

  • Some of these things include performance analysis, reporting, budget management, compensation/commission planning, workflow and forecasting.
  • The moment you find yourself giving up time for one-on-ones with your people, coaching, developing them, being out in the field working with them and your customers, you are doing the least important part of your job.

42 IF YOU CAN’T MEASURE IT …

  • It’s important to trace things backwards from quota attainment, understanding the key activities that drive the output — quota attainment.
  • 4 types of metrics.
    • BUSINESS MANAGEMENT: The classic metrics are Quota/Quota Attainment, Orders, Revenue, Sales, Gross Margin. Sometimes we might see other metrics like market share, growth, customer satisfaction. The common thing about all of these is they are output or trailing metrics.
    • STRATEGIC:  Are you investing enough time in selling new products? Are you growing your key accounts? Are you retaining your current customers? How are you doing in competitive win backs?
    • OPERATIONAL:  Pipeline metrics represent a great example of a good operational metric.
    • DEVELOPMENTAL:  Do you have the right composition of your team to make the numbers (skills, experience, capabilities)?
    • Do your people have the right skills, knowledge, tools to achieve their goals?
  • As you think about establishing metrics, you may also want to think of a few other items:              
    • What behaviors do you want to drive?
    • How do you ensure quality in the achievement of the goals?
    • How will the salesperson “game “the metrics?
    • Do they allow you to achieve both your business management goals and your long term growth goals for the organization?

43 PERFORMANCE METRICS AND ANALYTICS

  • Pipeline measures:
    • Total qualified deals in the pipeline, deals at each stage.
    • Cycle time/velocity, both through the pipeline and from stage to stage.
    • Average deal size/value.
    • Number of deals progressing from stage to stage each month.
    • Win rate, abandonments, losses, no decision made.
    • Stalled deals, slipped deals, deals that keep changing value in the sales cycle.
    • Net new deals added to the pipeline.
    • Deals that have moved to a new stage (a velocity measure).
    • Pipeline coverage.
  • ACTIVITY MEASURES
    • Prospecting meetings per week.
    • Number of first calls (telephone calls) per day or week (make sure these are actual conversations, not dials — dials are probably one of the most meaningless numbers around. Any salesperson not meeting your daily dial requirement is just not being creative.).
    • Number of proposals per week or month
    • Number of email campaigns (responses, follow-up, etc.)
    • Number of demonstrations (I’m not a fan, but this might be relevant).
    • Select social media activities/engagement (follows, likes, etc. tend to be irrelevant, but there may be some good social engagement metrics.)
  • OTHER PERFORMANCE MEASURES
    • New customer acquisition
    • Customer retention
    • Product line performance
    • BUDGET/EXPENSE
    • PEOPLE MEASURES: Voluntary/Involuntary Attrition; Recruiting/Onboarding Metrics: Employee Satisfaction
    • PRODUCTIVITY ANALYSIS: One of my favorites is called CPOD (Cost per Order Dollar — or this could also be Cost for Revenue or Sales).

44 FORECASTING

  • Most often, the forecast is viewed as “Will we get the deal and how certain are we?” But a good forecast has several other important elements. There is a time element. That is “will we get the deal when we say we will get the deal.”
  • The second element is the value/content of the deal. Again, this tells us, “We expect the deal will be for these products and services and will be worth this much.”
  • We must base our forecast on actions and commitments the customer makes.
  • If the salesperson is not absolutely confident in forecasting the deal (winning it, when it will be completed, for what and how much), then it’s wrong to coerce the salesperson into committing something to the forecast.

45 TIME PLANNING

  • Bad time management comes from a couple of sources:
    • 1. Poor planning and time management by the individual.
    • 2. ”System imposed“ time drains.
  • You need to train your people to have a disciplined approach to managing their time during the day and week. It’s useful in your one-on-ones to review their weekly or even biweekly calendar.
  • You want them blocking out time for critical activities and meetings.
  • They should block certain time periods every day/week for prospecting
  • Another area that is a huge time drain is post-sales customer service and problem solving.
  • You have your greatest impact when your time is focused on working with and developing your people.

46 COMPENSATION/COMMISSION/INCENTIVES

  • Total At-Plan Compensation sets the bar at what we are willing to or can afford to pay people to achieve the expected level of sales.
  • Once Total At-Plan Compensation has been set, then you have to decide how you are going to pay it out.
  • The variable piece can include commissions, bonuses, incentives/SPiF’s, contests, or other mechanisms.
  • I like to have some part of the variable compensation reserved for bonuses that can be defined around specific accomplishments
  • Keep your compensation plan as simple as possible. You want your people to understand how they get paid. Another reason for keeping it simple is that you have to administer the plan.
  • Create policies for:
    • Splits
    • Draws (recoverable and non-recoverable,) generally used in bringing new people on board.
    • Caps
  • A little recognition goes a long way! At the same time, there is a danger in over-recognizing everything with everybody,
  • There are any number of tactical things like workflow management, sales programs, resources planning, training, systems and tools, quota planning, territory planning, and others.

PART SEVEN: SALES ENABLEMENT: EQUIPPING YOUR PEOPLE TO SELL

47 SALES ENABLEMENT: EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENCY

  • [Sales enablement is defined as] providing tools, systems, processes, training, coaching and development that “enable “salespeople to be more effective and efficient.
  • Effectiveness generally refers to doing the right things in the right way. Efficiency looks at how we to do the right things faster. In learning something new, you first learn how to do it very slowly. It makes sense focusing on effectiveness first, then look at efficiency.

48 TRAINING

  • PRODUCT TRAINING should focus on customers, that is, it should answer questions:
    • What problems do our products and services solve?
    • Who has those problems — both what types of companies, and what job titles within those companies?
    • What causes those problems?
    • How do we capture the customers’ interest and get them to consider a new approach?
    • What do customers generally look for when they are buying these products? What does their buying cycle look like?
    • How do customers justify these solutions to their management?
    • What concerns or objections are they likely to raise?
  • SALES SKILLS TRAINING
    • We need to get training that is not so much technique oriented, but that helps the person think about the situation — whether a deal, a negotiation, a sales call, an account. We need give them skills to analyze, develop plans, and execute those plans.
    • Do not invest in any sales skills training without a reinforcement plan build into the offering.
  • MARKET TRAINING/BUSINESS ACUMEN
  • CHANGE MANAGEMENT/PROJECT MANAGEMENT
  • CRITICAL THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING
  • As a team you should adopt an “Always Be Learning “approach.

49 PROCESSES

  • The sales process is about deals or opportunities. The sales process is the series of steps and activities your team undertakes to help move the customer through their buying process.
  • The sales process is based on your organization’s best practice at winning deals.

50 SYSTEMS AND TOOLS

  • Implemented incorrectly, sales tools can be huge productivity and money drains.
  • The key question in CRM or any other tool, is: “How does it improve the efficiency or effectiveness of the salespeople?”
  • In implementing the tools, let the salespeople define the implementation process. Make sure they are engaged and getting great value.

51 SALES TOOLS: THE NUTS AND BOLTS

52 CONTENT AND COLLATERAL MATERIALS

PART EIGHT: TERM SALES MANAGEMENT ISSUES

53 STRATEGIES FOR THE OVERALL SALES ORGANIZATION

54 ENTERPRISE STRATEGY

55 CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

56 SALES AND THE REST OF THE COMPANY

57 WHAT’S OUR GO-TO-CUSTOMER STRATEGY?

58 MARKET ECOSYSTEM

59 TALENT AND CULTURE

  • Peter Drucker was quoted as saying, “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast.” I’d add, “Talent Finishes It Off at Lunch.”

60 CONTINUOUS LEARNING AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

PART NINE: YOUR FUTURE AS A SALES MANAGER—AND BEYOND

61 YOU AND YOUR FUTURE

62 MANAGING YOUR MANAGER

  • Your manager needs to invest time in coaching you.
  • Being a team player isn’t about blind compliance. In fact, it’s the opposite; it’s challenging each person on the team to stretch further.

63 WHEN THINGS GO WRONG

  • FIND PROBLEMS WHEN THEY ARE SMALL. The biggest mistake I see managers making is depending too much on trailing metrics.
  • SOMETIMES A LOT OF DIFFERENT PROBLEMS ARE ACTUALLY RELATED TO ONE UNDERLYING PROBLEM

64 POWER IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS

65 WHERE DID THE TIME GO? MANAGING YOUR OWN PERFORMANCE AND DEVELOPMENT

  • You are only successful if your people are.
  • Be vicious about your time. Protect it, don’t give it up without very good reason. Your priority is time spent with your people. For all other meetings, insist on clear agendas before putting a meeting on your schedule.
  • THREE THINGS THAT MUST BE ON YOUR CALENDAR
    • 1. Keep at least 15 % of your daily agenda unscheduled.
    • 2. Schedule “think time.”
    • 3. Schedule exercise time every day.

66 WHAT MAKES YOU A GREAT LEADER AND MANAGER?

  • Will your people still seek you out for your coaching and advice 10, 15, 20 years later?

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