In all honesty, I am a streaky salesperson (at best). I have always been prone to peaks and valleys in my sales which speaks more to my abilities. Nonetheless, this ManageSmarter.com article addresses this problem with tips for breaking out of a slump. First, a great point: Besides, prospects can smell desperation in sales people. If you panic, your prospects will sense that you’re desperate, and they’ll avoid you. Oh that is so true. Prospects have an innate ability to detect a salesperson working a deal out of desperation. And, of course, that desperation typically plays out as a sizeable discount in the sale price. Then there is this: Third,… Read More
Continue ReadingCompensation – Keep It Simple
Every year we find December to be a fertile time for sourcing salespeople. One of the biggest reasons – the upcoming year’s compensation plan. More specifically, new commission plans tied to new quotas. The salespeople receive the new plan and are, well, disgruntled. Or ticked off. Good salespeople tend to look outside for new opportunities when their commission plan gets over-adjusted following a strong year. Let me speak clearly here – I am all for raising the bar, but you do have to take all factors into account before setting the new targets. ManageSmarter.com offers up this article – Fast Track Your 2008 Sales Compensation Plans – with 10 tips… Read More
Continue ReadingVelvet Hammer Management
I’ve recently been looking at creativity in selling since it seems to be a topic of discussion with greater frequency. The younger generations are flattening the long-standing hierarchal structures that have been a hallmark of corporate structure. Part of this change has to be attributed to the creative freedom wielded by so many Gen Y employees. Managing creative types can be a real challenge as Jack Welch discusses in this article: But what a mistake if you lead creative people from your heart and stop there. Managing creative people also requires—it even demands—a measure of authority. Nothing heavy-handed, of course. You don’t want your resident out-of-the-box thinkers running for the… Read More
Continue ReadingLeverage Your Sales Team’s Abilities
BusinessWeek.com offers up a great article from one of the authors of First, Break All The Rules. The author discusses how managers discover what makes their employees tick and then they use that information to place the employee in the best situations for success. This approach is one we wholly subscribe to: Do what great managers do: Instead of trying to change your employees, identify their unique abilities (and even their eccentricities)—then help them use those qualities to excel in their own way. This approach is one greatly important aspect of successful sales management. At times, we see sales managers who expect the sales team to adapt fully to him… Read More
Continue ReadingPipeline Or Pipe Dream
One of the tenets of successful sales management is effective pipeline management. Sales managers have to have an accurate read on their team’s opportunities and a good understanding of when they will close. This truth is never more important than in a capital equipment sale. If a product has a long lead time or a highly customized build, the sales pipeline is even more critical. ManageSmarter.com discusses this topic in their article Pipeline = Lifeline (great title): “Pipeline management is a critical issue,” Stein says. “Few companies have it figured out.” For those that do, they will reap a myriad of benefits, including better forecasting the length of the sales… Read More
Continue ReadingKnow Your Value
I was meeting with a VP of Sales yesterday discussing the onramping program for the new salesperson we found for them. He brought up a good point in that his new salesperson was spending time researching their competition. Unfortunately, they are in a commoditized market with many – many – competitors. The VP told the salesperson that there are too many competitors to research since they do not have a specific, common competitor. This led to a discussion that I heard regarding federal authorities and counterfeit money (a common topic this morning). There are far too many counterfeiters with different techniques to know all of the scams. So instead, the… Read More
Continue ReadingIt Is Review Time
It is that time of year again…no, not Christmas – employee reviews. This topic is of great interest to us in that we help companies on-ramp new sales hires. One of the key aspects of onramping is regular meetings or reviews. That is management 101. Yet, it is surprising how many managers have a tendency to avoid a structured review with their employees. I suspect some of it has to do with the fact that managers may not be involved in their sales reps activities. I’m not talking about babysitting them every day, but I am talking about pre-call strategizing and post-call debriefing. If a sales manager is not completing those… Read More
Continue ReadingThe 8 Essential Objections
From JustSell.com: the objections 1. lack of perceived value in the product or service 2. lack of perceived urgency in purchasing the offering 3.perception of an inferiority to a competitive or in-house offering 4. internal political issue between parties/ departments 5. lack of funds to purchase the offering 6. personal issue with the decision maker(s) 7. initiative with an external party 8. “it’s safer to do nothing” perception Of these, I believe salespeople fall down most often with the last one. If your salespeople are not qualifying a prospect properly, the prospect will most often allow the deal to stagnate. They perceive no loss in waiting. If that is true,… Read More
Continue ReadingEntrepreneurial Lessons
CareerBuilder.com links to an Entrepreneur.com article that asked… 9 entrepreneurs take a look back at their startup days and reveal what they would have done differently if they knew then what they know now. Great premise. Here’s the response I enjoyed the most (emphasis mine): “We would have spent more time and money on search engine optimization. Top placement in Google is key to any business in this day and age, and the cost of PPC gets higher every day. In addition, we would have placed more emphasis on employee commissions. We’ve learned over time that commissions and incentives drive employees to bring in more business.” How true that is. … Read More
Continue ReadingSelling In The Information Age
I was reading an interesting article from ManageSmarter.com titled Sales Triggers for Advantage and came across this opening: Do you remember the old days when the sales professional’s role was easier to manage? I’m not saying the actual job of selling was easier—none of us signed up for a sales career because it was easy—but the amount of information we had to work with was far less than today. Before the Web, you had a directory of industry professionals to cold call and some leads to follow up on. You drew from your own contacts and those of your colleagues, and perhaps read a trade magazine or journal for industry… Read More
Continue Reading