Sales Management. Simplified.: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team

by Mike Weinberg

Said differently, these salespeople were making a conscious choice to complete administrative tasks rather than actually selling because they worked under

management philosophy where the consequences were harsher for not updating the CRM than for missing sales goals.

Remember

But when did it become acceptable to manage people who manage people and relationships via email?

Mngmnt via e-mail

Newsflash for sales managers: Living with your head buried in CRM screens is not akin to leading your sales team. And your ability to craft a high volume of sharply worded emails does not substitute for actually managing the people who work for you.

Again e-mail mngmt

The successful individual sales producer wins by being as selfish as possible with her time.

Think about other key sales management responsibilities: Leading team meetings. Developing talent. Encouraging hearts. Removing obstacles. Coaching others. Challenging data, false assumptions, wrong attitudes, and complacency. Pushing for more. Putting the needs of your team members ahead of your own.

Role of a sales manager

Aren’t trust and integrity two of the most important characteristics we seek in our leaders? How in the world can you build trust in your sales organization when the guy in charge is effectively taking food off the table of the people entrusted to him?

Taking leads from the team

Paying higher commission rates for new sales and lower rates for repeat sales is a simple concept.

How to focus on new leads

Sales is a unique type of job. To do it successfully, you have to want to sell. Think about that statement for a minute. A salesperson has to want to sell. There is no way to effectively prospect for new business or penetrate a challenging existing customer if your heart is not in it. A miserable salesperson cannot represent her company, her solution, or herself well. If her heart is not engaged, she won’t fight to get in. She won’t be able

Peptalk

Sellers approach the sales call already in presentation mode and are too quick to jump to a demo or presentation. Salespeople talk way too much and listen way too little. It’s very hard to come across as a professional problem solver when you don’t discover the customer’s real issues. As I’m fond of repeating: Discovery precedes presentation—always! Salespeople give off the vibe that they are there to “pitch at” the prospect, which creates an awkward, adversarial dynamic and often provokes a guarded, even cynical, posture from the customer.

Not dos for calls

Take some time now to replay in your mind the last dozen or so of your people’s sales calls that you observed. Were the salespeople coming across as consultative professionals or product pushers? Did they do more talking or listening? Was their objective to learn as much as possible as to improve the customer’s condition, or to launch into presentation mode as quickly as possible? And, most important, if you were the customer, how would you view the salesperson—simply as a self-interested vendor or as a true value creator, advisor, and trustworthy business partner? Amateurish

Evaluate call

the common causes of sales team underperformance outlined in these first sixteen chapters and assess which are potentially hindering your team’s results: Lack of focus on goals and results Not publishing sales reports; sales managers not regularly reviewing results with individual members of the sales team Burying the sales manager with non-sales responsibilities Sales managers playing desk jockey or CRM jockey Managing the team via email and CRM screens Prioritizing CRM task management above sales results Player-coach selling sales managers trying to juggle opposite worlds Sales managers competing with their own people Sales managers with a hero complex deflating salespeople Sales managers losing sight of their primary job and replacing the battle helmet with a firefighter helmet, trying to personally tackle every problem Having the same person head up sales and operations and default to addressing urgent operational issues instead of pushing hard for sales growth A one-size-fits-all approach to talent management; poor role definition Asking farmers and engineers to pick up a weapon and become sales hunters Leadership turning a blind eye to perennial underperformers Silly, counterproductive compensation plans An anti-sales culture—arbitrary commission deductions, lack of appreciation, and constant complaining about salespeople High-ego senior executives who deflate the sales team by pontificating, micromanaging, and behaving inappropriately in front of customers Entrepren...

Reasons why teams underperform

Four Rs of Sales Talent Management: 1. Right People in the Right Roles 2. Retain Top Producers 3. Remediate or Replace Underperformers (coach up or coach out) 4. Recruit

Talent Management

you can’t transform sales organizations by coaching everyone into better salespeople. To create meaningful, lasting sales performance improvement, it is critical to get sales leadership and culture and talent management right first.

Importance of cuture

questions concerning your current sales team culture: What are the predominant shared attitudes across the sales organization, including the sales manager? Could your team members articulate agreed-upon shared values? If so, what are they? Which shared practices are hallmarks of your sales team? Is there is an accepted, understood, and enforced way of thinking and behaving that characterizes your salespeople? Culture

Evaluate current culture

We are elite. We strive to dominate the competition. We keep score and constantly look at and talk about the scoreboard—in the hallways, in our team meetings, and when we meet 1:1. We are loud and proud. We have each others’ backs. We have fun. We are careful about who we add to this team because we have something very special and we guard it protectively. We come to team meetings with great attitudes, expecting to participate. We check our egos and pride at the door. We tease each other in a good-natured way because we’re like family; we have very high standards and, most important, we want everyone to win. In fact, we expect to win. When we flop in practice we get called out because it is not acceptable to flop in the real game. We believe in pushing each other hard and telling each other the truth. And when we win big, we celebrate big.

Petalk/Team Culture

Every single month this meeting began exactly the same way. The sales leader and the salesperson both knew that before anything else, we were going to look at last month and year-to-date results versus goal and relative ranking versus the rest of the sales team. If the previous month and year-to-date results were phenomenal, the meeting was essentially over. Donnie would pat you on the back, tell you to keep it up, and then encourage you to go buy that fancy new car you’d been eyeing. Meeting adjourned. But the reality is that the meeting almost never ended after the results phase. In the example above, sure I was doing pretty darn well, but I had missed the month and was trailing two other salespeople who were beating their goal for the year by more than I was. Donnie wasn’t going to let me off that easy. “Mike, you missed the mark last month and it cost you. You’ve fallen to third in the rankings. What are you going to do about it?” Out came the legal pad with his notes from last month’s meeting. “Where are you on these deals that didn’t close last month as projected? What else is hot? Tell me what materialized from your Memphis trip last week? Take me through your most significant opportunities; let’s talk dates and likelihood of closing.” Sure, today we have slicker tools, we communicate much faster, and everyone is kept better abreast of the status of deals in the pipeline. But don’t let that distract you from the bigger point here. When the results weren’t what they ...

Example of good 1-1

THE SALES MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTABILITY PROGRESSION 1. Results 2. Pipeline 3. Activity

Accountability progression

And to the salesperson attempting to tell us you don’t perform well when being “micromanaged,” I say this: It doesn’t look like you were doing too well on your own before we stepped in attempting to help you. So if you don’t want to have these deeper level accountability conversations, there are two options. You can improve results and the quality of your pipeline so we don’t need to talk about activity. Or, alternatively, you can go work somewhere else where they’re cool with you failing.

Dealing with excuses during 1-1

By far, the most common request I receive for help with sales meetings is with agenda topics. Sales managers are craving ideas to make their team meetings more meaningful. Here are some of my favorite agenda items: Personal Updates. Go around the horn asking each person to share for a minute or two what’s going on in his or her personal life. It’s a great opportunity to enhance relationships on the team and to build empathy. When people are transparent, we may discover important news in a team member’s life that helps us better understand why the person is moody, grumpy, elated, distracted, etc. If someone’s kid is really struggling or he’s dealing with a terminally ill parent, wouldn’t that be valuable to know? On the flip side, if the top producer announces that she’s buying a summer home on the lake, wouldn’t that serve as good motivation for the rookies on the team? Review Sales Results and Highlight Outstanding Performance. While I’ve made the case that we should scold individuals in private, we should definitely celebrate success in public! The sales meeting is a great place to distribute and review sales reports. Give the top producers their due. Highlight outstanding individual achievements or marked improvement. Be generous with praise. Success Stories. Ask a handful of salespeople to share the specifics about a recent sales victory. You can either ask the individuals to come to the meeting prepared, providing guidelines about what and how long you’d like them to ...

Daily meeting ideas

If you are serious about leading your sales team and establishing a winning, high-performance culture, talk constantly about goals and results, and get with your salespeople 1:1, in team meetings, and in the field.

Key to a winning team

no one should be surprised that you, as the manager, are looking closely at results and are concerned by repeated underperformance. Schedule a meeting or phone call with Johnny (the underperformer), and start it with something like this: “Johnny, it should not be a surprise that we are having this conversation today. I’ve discussed with you on numerous occasions that your results are not acceptable, and I am concerned that you are not turning it around as we both hoped you would. I want you to succeed. I believe you want to succeed. So we’re meeting today because I want to help you get on the right track starting right now, because the status quo is unacceptable.”

Inform underperformers that they are under the loop

It is not acceptable to tell the salesperson that he needs to “show improvement.” Spell. It. Out. Specifically, what kind of improvement? “Johnny, I understand that you may not necessarily be able to close X number of new deals or Y dollars in the next sixty days. However, we need to put a firm stake in the ground to evaluate your progress. Here’s what I am asking you to commit to as a demonstration that you are serious about turning around your performance (the following numbers are for illustration purposes only and have no meaning): In the next sixty days, you need to have 1. Secured eighteen discovery meetings with named target accounts 2. Created eight new opportunities in the pipeline, two of which need to reach Phase M and two more need to get to Phase N. “Johnny, are we clear on the expectations?” Johnny nods. You continue, “I’d like you to write up a mini-plan naming the specific existing accounts and prospects that you are going to pursue for those eighteen meetings. Within two days, I also want to see your planning calendar for the next two months so I can arrange to spend some time working with you in the field. And you and I will begin meeting every week instead of every month. When we meet each week, first you’ll update me on your progress and then I’ll be happy to spend the rest of the time helping and coaching you. All right, Johnny, repeat back what we just agreed on so I know we’re on the same page.” The second critical characteristic for a successful rem...

How to set proper goals for underperformers

The second and third common story sins go hand-in-hand. Salespeople are often boring and self-focused. They begin by talking about their company and their offerings. What could be less appealing to a potential customer than the salesperson leading with what his company does and how long it has been in business? You chuckle reading it, but that is exactly how most salespeople start their sales story. “We do this, that, and the other thing. We’ve been in business thirty-nine years. We are privately held. Here are pictures of our facilities.” I may injure the next salesperson who puts a picture of his company’s buildings in a presentation!

Script call 1 - Company

An effective story: Gives salespeople confidence to prospect Changes the dynamic of the sales dance and positions your salespeople as experts and consultants Gets the customer or prospect’s attention Helps customers to see clearly and quickly that what you sell addresses the very issues they face Enables the salesperson to better articulate the true value your solution delivers Warms up the customer to respond to probing questions Justifies your premium price and position in the market Differentiates your company from competitors Makes salespeople even more proud of their company

Script call 1

Let me offer a simple template for an individual salesperson’s plan that has proved helpful as a starting point: Goals—What are you going to achieve? We always start with the end in mind. Possible categories in this section would include total revenue or gross margin goals for the year, number of new accounts or new pieces of business acquired, dollars sold to both existing and new accounts, and specific product-mix goals. You might even ask the rep to “name and claim” the monster account or dream client he or she will nail this year. As an aside, it is amazing how many salespeople actually close a deal with a dream client in the year they named it in their plan. Strategies—How are you going to do it? Where is it going to come from? In this section, I like to ask questions about market focus, target account lists, major cross-sell opportunities, most growable, and most at-risk accounts. I want the salespeople to articulate what new approaches will get them in front of prospects, and how they will better penetrate current customers. If it’s a territory management job, I ask the salespeople to revisit their yearly planning calendar and discuss how they can be more intentional in segmenting accounts and covering the territory. Actions—What are you going to do? In this section, we want to hear about activity and metrics. What’s “The Math”? How many calls, initial face-to-face meetings, presentations, etc. will the salesperson commit to making? How will the salesperson block ca...

Businessplan for New Year

The sales management role can be one of the most challenging jobs on the planet. Everyone wants a piece of you. Bosses, colleagues in other departments, and sales team members don’t think twice about asking for your time or putting work on your plate. If you allow these people who don’t really understand your job to dictate how you spend your time, you’ll not only be more overwhelmed and more miserable, but you will fail at your most important job—leading the sales team to victory.

Words of wisdom

You were not hired to do work; you were put in your position to produce results. Let me say that again: Your job is to drive results. There is no prize for handling a bigger load, reading and sending hundreds of emails, attending endless meetings, or even planning monthly birthday parties. Being busy, even extremely busy, as such, can be worthless. That is particularly true when we’re busy because we’re playing good corporate citizen, putting on the fire chief’s helmet, and burying ourselves in non-sales-leadership activities!

Truth spoken