A CEO Dilemma
“Are my salespeople the best they can be? Are they doing all they can do?” These are questions I often hear from CEOs and other executives in the business world. When I ask them how they are doing, they refer to their revenue. “Beautiful”…but how do you know they are long-term, A-team players? Are they executing the correct behaviors to grow your business in the long run, or are they just collecting “low-hanging fruit” for today?
Complete this simple exercise, and calculate how much profit improvement potential exists within your sales force. Ask yourself these four sets of questions:
a)
On average, how many new-prospect contacts does my average salesperson make per month?
b)
How many would the ideal “A-team player” salesperson make?
a)
On average, what is the closing ratio (percentage) of my average seller?
b)
What would it be for an “A-team player”?
a)
On average, what’s the dollar value of an average sale for my average seller?
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The answer? Raise your performance expectations, which demands improvement from your sales team in three areas, and from you, in one.
Here is what to look for from your team:
Your sellers must become more effective at prospecting. That means creating a prospecting plan and holding themselves to it. That means “calling high” in your prospects’ organizations. That means creating and delivering a compelling message about the problems you can solve for your prospects. That means pre-qualifying before agreeing to an appointment instead of just sending literature or going on an appointment because they are “willing to see you.” Your sales force must also understand the process and skill of true networking. I do not mean going through the motions of showing up at an event, with drink in hand, while speaking only to friends and colleagues who they already know. Networking means having a plan and a goal before walking in, and not leaving without its
The motivation of the sales force is so low that they think that the district managers are no more that the baby sitters. No right schedule is being released by the management, there is no sales management planning in the organization. The leadership runs from the top. The employees just want to make sales without having concern about the company in that they work. Moreover, the uncertain night calls and long distance travels for the reps and frequent changes in the sales organizational structure has made problem even worse.
Thank you for the opportunity to assess your sales data in order to provide recommendations for increasing your sales. The analysis and recommendations below are based on the data you provided, which covers a period from May 2004 through June 2006. The analysis below is based on this data alone. Therefore, our recommendations should be tempered by your knowledge of business realities and your market. Please let us know if we can answer any questions concerning the analysis or the recommendations provided.
Also take careful attention to notice the difference in the two quarters from 2004 and 2006. It looks like a majority of your sales representatives are making solid revenue for the company.
* Purchase relevant publications and read at least two journal articles a day in order to stay current.
MedTech Pharmaceutical is not meeting its full potential in sales. Some changes would need to be considered to help encourage salespeople to perform better. Even though they are working off full commission, other incentives need to be implemented. Morale needs to be high in order to reach the potential. Encouragement for advances needs to be visible to the salespeople so they do not become complacent. Therefore, changes could help the organization grow and reach their potential.
Peak Garage Door Inc. has set a goal to increase their sales for 2004. Garage door industry is expecting a growth of 2.4% while the management of Peak is looking to increase company’s sales 26.4%. The company currently has 50 exclusive dealers and 300 non-exclusive dealers. Management has three proposals in front of them. The first suggestion is to increase the number dealers in their existing markets. The second recommendation is to develop an exclusive franchise agreement with existing non-exclusive dealers. The third recommendation is to decrease the number of dealers and focus company’s resources on increasing support for the existing dealers. Of course there is an option for them to leave everything as it is. My
These transformative changes to the selling environment are ultimately forcing the salesperson to reengineer and rethink how they approach their business accounts. Failure in adapting to these changes can result in many adverse situations but ultimately revolves around ineffective team selling.
instead of investing in seminars and workshops, the sales force needs to see the vision for the
The training and marketing communication spends was something I played with and reduced as my allocation to R&D increased. This did affect the quality of interactions of the sales force – what I could have tried was to increase the spends.
4. Concentrate on software development and allow other companies with sales expertise to assist them as they enter the enterprise market. Increase reliance on resellers. This will jump start the sale of their new products and services without additional investment in development of sales organization.
In the ongoing pursuit of new qualified leads and sales-ready prospects, marketing and sales teams often push other considerations aside. As a result, many companies’ pipelines are already full of leads that warrant attention but that do not get it. Instead, we focus on only the lowest-hanging fruit.
With this bad experience about the company why should the sales person do the best for the company?
Prospecting is the first step in the process that identifying qualified potential customers, which is essential to sales success as a database of inappropriate customers will waste time and money. Salespeople or companies can use searching engine like google or eBay to target and
The next stage in the personal selling process is approaching the prospect. This means actually having an initial first meeting with the prospect for the first time, face-to-face. (Personal Selling, pg.136) Like most things in life, “Practice Makes Perfect”, and in this particular case, this statement holds true in that the more a sales representative practices and rehearses their sales presentation, the better. Practicing and rehearsing one’s presentation assist sales representatives in