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Manage Your Sales Force

Guest post by: Bill Boyer

Article Overview: Many CEO's/owners do not feel that they understand the sales process, so they hire salespeople and do not manage them. They just tell them, "Don't just stand there, sell something". Does this ever work? Probably not. Do not fall for the old idea that you must be a sales expert to manage the sales process.

Manage Your Sales Force

Many CEO's/owners do not feel that they understand the sales process, so they hire salespeople and do not manage them. They just tell them, "Don't just stand there, sell something". Does this ever work? Probably not. Do not fall for the old idea that you must be a sales expert to manage the sales process. Sales is just like any other function in your business. There is a process that must be managed and monitored. And either it is working or it is not. And since sales is your top line, it is very easy to determine whether it is working or not.

In most small business, you can quickly tell the CEO who has a strong sales background and those who do not. Those CEO's do not put up with the excuses they get from sales. The CEO's without the sales experience do not want to manage the salespeople; therefore they are satisfied with the excuses they receive. Salespeople generally tell you what you want to hear. Managers generally give a lot of slack to the sales persons. And salespeople are not good folks to give excess slack to.

Real life example: April was an ex-large firm accountant with a strong analytical background. She also was a good operational leader. But she had never liked dealing with salespeople in her previous job or her current company. When she was with the accounting firm her experience has caused her to judge salespeople as unscrupulous, annoying, and lazy. She recognized that she must have a sales staff, but she wanted as little to do with them as possible. Her business was in a very strong market and her business grew 15% for many years and profits were good. What was there to worry about?

We finally convinced her that she needed to monitor her sales staff and we helped her with this. She worked with the sales staff to develop sales targets. She reviewed existing and new customer activity. She insisted that the sales people target new accounts. And she asked why sales had decreased with some clients or why we had lost some clients. The sales staff had to start doing weekly reports. The results were impressive. She pushed her growth the 22% annually.

Often, the problem occurs at the beginning of the process. That is, we keep weak sales people on the payroll. Studies on sales performance have discovered that your stronger sales people sell 50% more than the weaker ones. Therefore it is easy to determine your weak people. You cannot be afraid to fire bad salespeople. You need to give them a chance to improve, but if they do not, fire them and don't wait too long. You may have to fire numerous people to get to the good ones. I have read that it takes 10 candidates to find one good salesperson. You will need to develop training to be sure they know your product. At the same time, you must develop an objective tool to weed out the weak ones early in the process. You should be able to develop a 30/60/90 day plan and this plan should be designed so that the salesperson can determine whether he or she is meeting the plan objectives. Be careful when developing the objectives. Some plans may not be centered on closed sales especially if the lead time for your business is very long. Closed sales are not the only way to measure performance.

I strongly recommend that there be some type of weekly reporting system of sales activity. And there need to be goals to measure their activity against. This can be computerized with many of the customer relationship management systems or it can just be a simple hand written report. These goals should not just be on sales volume, it should include potential customers contacted, leads generated from existing customers and other criterion that fits your industry. In most companies, salespeople should be primarily on an incentive based compensation plan. And, if possible, these systems can be designed to give extra bonuses for those salespeople who excel. But to be fair, be sure that your sales staff is adequately trained on your products and industry. You cannot criticize a sales person who has not been adequately trained. And if you think this person has much potential, there are a few excellent training courses, programs, and/or coaches for salespeople.

In summary, you must evaluate your sales staff and take corrective action to deal with deficient sales people. Remember the old adage, hire slowly and fire quickly.

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Article Tags: coaching, consulting, leadership, management, sales force, sales people, small business



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