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Building a First Class Sales Team

Guest post by: Milton S. Cotter

Article Overview: Building a winning sales team starts with selecting the right talent, followed by focused training and effective motivation and management.

Building a First Class Sales Team

Step 1: SELECT THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO BEGIN WITH

FIRST: Recognize that you must attract good talent. That means investment in newspaper and/or job board ads to draw good candidates. If you are unsure about the best way to create an ad, let a professional organization (CRI or other) create the ad for you. Quit trying to hire from your competition. They won’t let the really capable people leave, and you don’t want the people they let leave. Family, friends and referrals from the people who work for you rarely possess all the sales traits you need in a salesperson. You must spend the money necessary to attract sales talent.

SECOND: Put in place a logical, consistent screening system that differentiates and qualifies an applicant from a jobseeker. There is no need to have someone review applications and resumes and contact applicants to qualify them. There are automated screening systems that can do this work for you. CRI’s Screenfast (www.Screenfast.Biz) is one economical example of such a solution.

THIRD: Once you have a pool of qualified applicants, interview the best to verify they have a good personality, appearance and really want to work in the type of job you have to offer. Test the finalists to make sure they have at least average or above average Mental Ability. Remember, you need salespeople who have the brains to learn your product line, make decisions and handle your customer. Pure personality tests, i.e., the Caliper, 16PF, Predictive Index, and Disc just won’t do it. THEY DON’T MEASURE HOW BRIGHT SOMEONE IS, NOR DO THEY MEASURE DECISION MAKING ABILITY. By using a testing tool that measures mental ability, you can make sure you hire salespeople who can learn what you need them to and can ultimately do an estimate correctly and create a correct contract ready for execution.

FOURTH: Make sure you have clear, concise answers from testing to validate, supplement or contradict your opinion from your interview with the candidate. Testing should tell you how the candidate measures in:

Drive
Integrity
Ability to meet and deal with people
Ego and Self Concept
Ability to close
Stamina to persevere and win
Questioning and probing skills
Commission motivation

It’s easy to hire people who appear to have great people and sales skills, but who lack the mental capacity to make quick decisions, create an accurate estimate or draft a valid contract. Or, they lack the dominance to close a sale or the drive to stay in a job on a commission basis and succeed. Testing can help you avoid these traps.

The Achiever assessment can provide you the mental acuity measurement you need to select good salespeople, as well as measurements for such critical personality traits as Drive, Competitiveness, Commission Motivation, Stamina to withstand rejection, and Competitiveness. To test a sales candidate with The Achiever requires an investment of $250.00. If you think that’s expensive, consider the costs associated with a salesperson that only closes one out of eight or nine leads you have spent money to provide, or what a fouled up estimate can cost you. The draw against commissions, training and missed sales can easily cost you thousands of dollars before you realize your new salesperson can’t produce. Or, they may recognize it and quit before you can show them the door or cut off the draw. Either way, a nominal $ 250.00 investment in The Achiever would have given you additional insight into the candidate’s ability to succeed as a salesperson for you, and possibly saved you from an expensive mistake.

FIFTH: Thorough background verification of a candidate makes sense. Prior address verification, reference checks, criminal history checks and motor vehicle license checks can help you be certain you aren’t hiring a convicted felon or someone with a “nasty habit” that you really don’t want around your customers or business.

Step 2: TRAIN THEM WELL

FIRST: Train them thoroughly in your product line.

SECOND: Just as important as product training, if not more important, is training in how to sell that product. Make sure you have the right talent to begin with, then inspire confidence in the salesperson by training them well.

Step 3: MOTIVATING AND MANAGING YOUR SALESPEOPLE

FIRST: Realize that you need to set reasonable and obtainable sales objectives, and if appropriate, gross profit objectives by salesperson. Work with each salesperson initially in a private meeting to set these objectives. Then, privately meet with each salesperson again on an monthly basis, or more often as you deem appropriate, to review performance and agree on goals for the coming month. After meeting with each salesperson individually, conduct a meeting of all salespeople as a group. At the group meeting, have each salesperson stand up in front of the group and state his or her sales goals and how they are to be reached. Write the goals on a board that can be readily viewed by the sales staff on a daily basis. Add up the numbers that represent the total sales objective for your business for the coming month.

Develop a creative way to offer additional incentives to your sales staff. For example, offer each salesperson that achieves their objective a dinner certificate for $60.00 or $80.00. Offer a higher value award if the salesperson exceeds his goal by 10%.

SECOND: The following month, repeat the individual and group sales meetings. At the group meeting, each salesperson should stand up in front of the group and state whether they reached their goal, and if so, how they reached it. If a goal was missed, the salesperson should offer an explanation of why the goal was missed. Encourage the group to offer friendly critiques and suggestions to each other. Each salesperson should also announce their goals for the next month.

This process is repeated each month. Follow the same process in realistically setting individual goals that are profitable to you, yet realistic and obtainable for the salesperson. Remember, the salesperson must believe in the objective and his or her ability to achieve it.

At the end of a quarter, have a recognition dinner and invite the salespeople and their guests (wife, friend, etc.) At each dinner have a rose for each female present.
Recognize your sales people with another award for those salespeople who met their objectives three months in a row, and a more significant award for those salespeople who exceeded their objective by 10% or more each month for the three-month period. As a bi-annual or annual award, consider offering a trip for two to the salesperson that exceeds goals by 10% over a six month or 12 month period. Recognize achievers at the dinner in front of the entire group and announce the trip as an award that any salesperson that qualifies can win.

Note: Before you meet with each salesperson individually on a monthly basis, review that individual’s Achiever report. The report includes Sales Potential and Personal Development sections that can provide you insight into areas in which you can make constructive comments regarding the salesperson’s selling strengths and weaknesses and what that individual can do to achieve higher levels of success. Share a copy of the report with the salesperson. Use it to your advantage to help the salesperson know what can be done to develop his or her sales skills.

THE KEY TO SUCCESS

Have your salespeople set realistic goals that they believe in and aspire to achieve. Then, provide the training, coaching and motivation to inspire them to achieve their goals. People compete best against themselves and their prior levels of success.


Examples of successful use of this approach include:

Toyota - top sales, profits and quality of product

Car dealerships – read the book, Customers for Life by Carl Sewell and Paul Brown

Cendant Corporation - Real Estate and Hotel Divisions

Related Articles
  3 most important films for leaders and entrepreneurs.
  Classes to Motivate and Manage a Team:
  My 10 Observations of the New AE
  Team Building Tips for Proactive Leaders
  DO YOU HAVE AN EFFECTIVE BUSINESS TEAM?

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