Proactive Sales Force Development
Proactive Sales Force Development
If you have significant sales force turnover, it is at a tremendous cost to your company’s potential profit margins. These lost profits can be recovered by initiating a well executed, ten-step Proactive Sales Force Development Plan that will help you gain and retain the right sales people for your particular company… sales people who gain and retain more loyal customers and maintain strong call to close ratios at the same time.
Have you calculated thoroughly what wrong hiring and sales force turnover is costing your company? Dr. Edwin D. Kellwood (College of Business Administration, Cal Poly Pomona, California) did research several years ago on the cost to a company of hiring the wrong sales person. His research indicated that the typical cost of recruitment, screening, selection, training, salary and first-year mistakes for a novice salesperson is about $137,000. He also found that first year attrition rates are from 25 to 75 percent. The main reason he stated for so many sales people leaving sales positions that first year is lost motivation related to unmet job expectations. His conclusion from the research was that the costs to a company of hiring a wrong sales person tower over advertising, sales promotion, public relations, or other marketing-related expenditures.
High turnover and less than stellar sales performance does not have to be an assumed cost of conducting business! These costs can be easily converted to profits! How? By implementing the following ten main steps in a ProActive Sales Force Development Plan!
PROFILING - The first step toward gaining a stellar sales force is right hiring. Develop a profile of the competency, character, and motivational factors for one or two of your star sales performers. You can do this through interviews, on-job observation, and surveys that generate modern computerized reports for employers. Such reports surface the natural motivational variables needed to be successful within a given company and a given position.
The concept of profiling your top performers and then profiling your top applicants to determine if they are the right “fit” for your company applies not only to your sales positions. It applies to all positions in your company if you the best customer-satisfying people possible.
RECRUITING - Once you have an accurate profile of the competencies, character traits and motivational strengths needed to fill your sales positions excellently, you are ready to draft a “magnetic” employment ad which will attract people of like strengths and repel people who do not have the strengths you desire. This will save you time by not reviewing wrong applicants applications. The language of the employment ad is focused on the key motivational traits, competencies and character traits possessed by your winners and when worded properly tends to attract excellent applicants and repel poor applicants.
INTERVIEWING - After receiving, reviewing and prioritizing the applications received from your employment ad, it is recommended that you conduct two levels of interviewing.
The first level of interviewing is a two to five minute telephone screening interview that helps you determine if the applicant is someone you think should be invited to the second, more in-depth interview. Determine the important things you want to discern from vocal patterns and answers to one to two key questions. Some examples of positive traits that can be assessed during a phone interview are calm, clear, friendly, genuine, logical, open, patient, mentally quick, relaxed, vital, listens well, direct, and warm. Some examples of negative traits are unfriendly, indirect, inattentive, lethargic, tense, slow to grasp, impatient, closed, scattered, harsh, insincere, gruff, fuzzy, and hurried. It also gives you the opportunity to assess the sales person’s telephone selling capabilities. A person who can’t sell themselves on the phone will not be able to sell your products on the phone. Most sales begin with a phone contact.
The second interview surfaces what the applicant can do in terms of expressed competencies, character and motivational variables, not what they would do theoretically! Form an interview team of four to six people representing departments who will be interfacing and working with your new sales person. Develop a set of key interview questions related to things you want to know about the person’s character, competency and motivation. Make sure these questions are likely to surface what the person has done, not what they would do. An example this kind of question design related to the competency of “planning” is, “What is the toughest planning effort you have ever undertaken, what steps did you take in planning it, and what results did you achieve as a result of your planning efforts? The goal is to get the prospective employee to tell you and your interview team their stories about what they actually did.
SELECTING - Once your second level interviews are completed for your top applicants, use a consensus process to determine your top one or two candidates. When consensus is used to determine who gets the nod to join the company, all members of the interview team and the people in the departments they represent tend to have a stake in helping the new employee succeed. It is at this point you need to invest in having your top candidates profiled as to motivation to determine their relative match with your star sales persons and their fit for your company culture.
ORIENTATING - Once profiled and selected, the new sales person needs to receive a solid orientation to your company, your company’s governing operating values, unique factors about your company’s culture, your products and services, and clear, written performance expectations. Getting everything up front and clear is critical to new sales person’s smooth transition and assimilation into your company’s sales team.
TRAINING - Assess and determine the knowledge, skills and attitudes your new sales person already possesses and those that they need to receive training and coaching to acquire. Have they mastered and demonstrate the fundamental, relationship-building selling skills which include facilitating the bridge from marketing to sales by identifying core benefits, investigating the gap, summarizing the gap and its consequences, orchestrating a flowing presentation, using follow up question focused on Features-Advantages-Benefits, conducting a firm closing, addressing prospect’s personal costs, focusing the prospect back on the deal, and showing gratitude.
Engage your new sales person in role playing and have them demonstrate the sales processes they use to gain and retain customers. Once their growth and development needs are established, lay out a realistic training and coaching schedule that will allow your new sales people to master and apply the sales competencies needed to successfully sell your particular products and services to your particular types of customers.
SUPERVISING - Once your new sales person is engaged in the selling process, he or she needs and deserves to be supported by excellent supervision. The ideal supervision process is collaborative and focuses on gaining insights into what optimum performance looks like. The goal is for the sales manager and sales team leader and the sales person to actively collaborate and cooperative in gaining “super vision” or insights into what is effective and what can be strengthened in the sales process. Leadership and supervision of the sales force has proven over and over again to be the most important factor in developing and retaining stellar, optimally producing sales persons who master, use and refine their sales skills.
OBSERVING – This is the first set of key skills you need as a sales managers in order to effectively develop and supervise your sales people. Go into the field and observe each of your sales people regularly. Don’t grab the lead and begin selling! Let them do the selling. Stick to observing and taking a few notes to use as reference points during your follow through conference.
CONFERRING – This is the second set of key skills you need as a sales manager in order to effectively develop a stellar sales force. The follow through conference to the observation should take place as soon as possible. Ideally right after leaving the customer’s place of business. During the conference, encourage the new sales person to describe what they did that they think facilitated the sales process and what they would do differently to facilitate it better in the future. Affirm their correct insights and then move on to providing them with corrective feedback and skills coaching in a collaborative, supportive and cooperative way.
COACHING- This is the third set of key skills you need as a sales manager in order to help your sales people develop and apply the skills they need to gain and retain loyal, satisfied customers. I believe it is wise and effective to promote peer coaching among your sales team members. In initiating peer coaching, the coaching process needs to be first modeled and used by the sales manager as he or she engages in the role of Sales Force Leader.
The goal is developing the most effective sales people possible and gaining and retaining loyal customers and a solid call to close ration. The key skills for coaching are effective interpersonal communication, task analysis, coaching to an objective, monitoring and adjusting, promoting retention, reflective interviewing, active listening, observing, and modeling.
Now you have them! Ten key steps in a stellar sales force development plan that will bring your sales people and your company the rich rewards of more easily and quickly gaining and retaining more loyal customers.
Proactive Sales Force Development - To learn more about this author, visit Millard MacAdam's Website.
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Does your company retain its own salaried sales people? If so, it is in a good position to build a stellar, sales team using the sales force development processes that will gain and retain more satisfied and long-term customers. Salaried sales people are more beholding than reps to a company and its sales manager and sales force leader. This is because the financial leverage a salary provides better opens the door for “getting what you expect and inspect with respect”. Salaries make getting a mutual accountability process, participation in training, skills improvement, and solid performance results easier.
If you have significant sales force turnover, it is at a tremendous cost to your company’s potential profit margins. These lost profits can be recovered by initiating a well executed, ten-step Proactive Sales Force Development Plan that will help you gain and retain the right sales people for your particular company… sales people who gain and retain more loyal customers and maintain strong call to close ratios at the same time.
Have you calculated thoroughly what wrong hiring and sales force turnover is costing your company? Dr. Edwin D. Kellwood (College of Business Administration, Cal Poly Pomona, California) did research several years ago on the cost to a company of hiring the wrong sales person. His research indicated that the typical cost of recruitment, screening, selection, training, salary and first-year mistakes for a novice salesperson is about $137,000. He also found that first year attrition rates are from 25 to 75 percent. The main reason he stated for so many sales people leaving sales positions that first year is lost motivation related to unmet job expectations. His conclusion from the research was that the costs to a company of hiring a wrong sales person tower over advertising, sales promotion, public relations, or other marketing-related expenditures.
High turnover and less than stellar sales performance does not have to be an assumed cost of conducting business! These costs can be easily converted to profits! How? By implementing the following ten main steps in a ProActive Sales Force Development Plan!
PROFILING - The first step toward gaining a stellar sales force is right hiring. Develop a profile of the competency, character, and motivational factors for one or two of your star sales performers. You can do this through interviews, on-job observation, and surveys that generate modern computerized reports for employers. Such reports surface the natural motivational variables needed to be successful within a given company and a given position.
The concept of profiling your top performers and then profiling your top applicants to determine if they are the right “fit” for your company applies not only to your sales positions. It applies to all positions in your company if you the best customer-satisfying people possible.
RECRUITING - Once you have an accurate profile of the competencies, character traits and motivational strengths needed to fill your sales positions excellently, you are ready to draft a “magnetic” employment ad which will attract people of like strengths and repel people who do not have the strengths you desire. This will save you time by not reviewing wrong applicants applications. The language of the employment ad is focused on the key motivational traits, competencies and character traits possessed by your winners and when worded properly tends to attract excellent applicants and repel poor applicants.
INTERVIEWING - After receiving, reviewing and prioritizing the applications received from your employment ad, it is recommended that you conduct two levels of interviewing.
The first level of interviewing is a two to five minute telephone screening interview that helps you determine if the applicant is someone you think should be invited to the second, more in-depth interview. Determine the important things you want to discern from vocal patterns and answers to one to two key questions. Some examples of positive traits that can be assessed during a phone interview are calm, clear, friendly, genuine, logical, open, patient, mentally quick, relaxed, vital, listens well, direct, and warm. Some examples of negative traits are unfriendly, indirect, inattentive, lethargic, tense, slow to grasp, impatient, closed, scattered, harsh, insincere, gruff, fuzzy, and hurried. It also gives you the opportunity to assess the sales person’s telephone selling capabilities. A person who can’t sell themselves on the phone will not be able to sell your products on the phone. Most sales begin with a phone contact.
The second interview surfaces what the applicant can do in terms of expressed competencies, character and motivational variables, not what they would do theoretically! Form an interview team of four to six people representing departments who will be interfacing and working with your new sales person. Develop a set of key interview questions related to things you want to know about the person’s character, competency and motivation. Make sure these questions are likely to surface what the person has done, not what they would do. An example this kind of question design related to the competency of “planning” is, “What is the toughest planning effort you have ever undertaken, what steps did you take in planning it, and what results did you achieve as a result of your planning efforts? The goal is to get the prospective employee to tell you and your interview team their stories about what they actually did.
SELECTING - Once your second level interviews are completed for your top applicants, use a consensus process to determine your top one or two candidates. When consensus is used to determine who gets the nod to join the company, all members of the interview team and the people in the departments they represent tend to have a stake in helping the new employee succeed. It is at this point you need to invest in having your top candidates profiled as to motivation to determine their relative match with your star sales persons and their fit for your company culture.
ORIENTATING - Once profiled and selected, the new sales person needs to receive a solid orientation to your company, your company’s governing operating values, unique factors about your company’s culture, your products and services, and clear, written performance expectations. Getting everything up front and clear is critical to new sales person’s smooth transition and assimilation into your company’s sales team.
TRAINING - Assess and determine the knowledge, skills and attitudes your new sales person already possesses and those that they need to receive training and coaching to acquire. Have they mastered and demonstrate the fundamental, relationship-building selling skills which include facilitating the bridge from marketing to sales by identifying core benefits, investigating the gap, summarizing the gap and its consequences, orchestrating a flowing presentation, using follow up question focused on Features-Advantages-Benefits, conducting a firm closing, addressing prospect’s personal costs, focusing the prospect back on the deal, and showing gratitude.
Engage your new sales person in role playing and have them demonstrate the sales processes they use to gain and retain customers. Once their growth and development needs are established, lay out a realistic training and coaching schedule that will allow your new sales people to master and apply the sales competencies needed to successfully sell your particular products and services to your particular types of customers.
SUPERVISING - Once your new sales person is engaged in the selling process, he or she needs and deserves to be supported by excellent supervision. The ideal supervision process is collaborative and focuses on gaining insights into what optimum performance looks like. The goal is for the sales manager and sales team leader and the sales person to actively collaborate and cooperative in gaining “super vision” or insights into what is effective and what can be strengthened in the sales process. Leadership and supervision of the sales force has proven over and over again to be the most important factor in developing and retaining stellar, optimally producing sales persons who master, use and refine their sales skills.
OBSERVING – This is the first set of key skills you need as a sales managers in order to effectively develop and supervise your sales people. Go into the field and observe each of your sales people regularly. Don’t grab the lead and begin selling! Let them do the selling. Stick to observing and taking a few notes to use as reference points during your follow through conference.
CONFERRING – This is the second set of key skills you need as a sales manager in order to effectively develop a stellar sales force. The follow through conference to the observation should take place as soon as possible. Ideally right after leaving the customer’s place of business. During the conference, encourage the new sales person to describe what they did that they think facilitated the sales process and what they would do differently to facilitate it better in the future. Affirm their correct insights and then move on to providing them with corrective feedback and skills coaching in a collaborative, supportive and cooperative way.
COACHING- This is the third set of key skills you need as a sales manager in order to help your sales people develop and apply the skills they need to gain and retain loyal, satisfied customers. I believe it is wise and effective to promote peer coaching among your sales team members. In initiating peer coaching, the coaching process needs to be first modeled and used by the sales manager as he or she engages in the role of Sales Force Leader.
The goal is developing the most effective sales people possible and gaining and retaining loyal customers and a solid call to close ration. The key skills for coaching are effective interpersonal communication, task analysis, coaching to an objective, monitoring and adjusting, promoting retention, reflective interviewing, active listening, observing, and modeling.
Now you have them! Ten key steps in a stellar sales force development plan that will bring your sales people and your company the rich rewards of more easily and quickly gaining and retaining more loyal customers.
Proactive Sales Force Development - To learn more about this author, visit Millard MacAdam's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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