Is your sales team
struggling? It’s possible that you made a bunch of bad hiring decisions—but
it’s not likely. If morale is low and every member of the sales team is
struggling to meet quota then you might need to look in the mirror to find the
source of the problem.
1. Your only advice is “sell, sell, sell.”
Sales representatives
already know they need to sell, sell, sell. That’s the definition of their
jobs, after all. Walking down the halls breezily shouting this mantra doesn’t
help. You should also avoid its close and equally odious cousin “ABC” (always
be selling).
Your sales team needs
concrete advice. They need to know the best way to approach leads—the unique
way that works specifically for your business. They need to know which words
will get them in the door, and which words will close the sale. They need to
specific insights on overcoming their specific obstacles. They do not need
platitudes.
2. Your inspire desperation instead of inspiration.
Sales representatives don’t
thrive in a culture of fear. Obviously you’ve set some expectations and you
want them to live up to them, but you need them focused on the positives. Their
own inner emotional world and attitudes can have a massive impact on their ability
to do good work for you.
Help them see the road
ahead. Help them see the money they can make. Keep the culture in your office
positive. Brow beating your sales reps won’t make them produce. It’ll just tank
their close rate.
3. Your training is non-existent.
You cannot throw a flipbook
at a sales rep and say “go get ‘em, Tiger!”. It doesn’t matter how experienced
the rep is. It doesn’t matter how simple the flipbook looks to you. Your rep
needs to learn the full presentation. Your rep needs to learn the ins and outs
of all of your products. Your rep needs to know exactly how things work on the
back end—how orders get processed, scheduled, and sent out.
You need a formal training
program to make all of those pieces fit together in a way that will allow your
rep to be a polished, focused expert who does a good job of presenting the
benefits of your company to the rest of the world.
4. You don’t have a CMS.
Nothing makes a sales rep
feel more unsure of himself than the thought that he or she is about to look
stupid. Sales reps need access to real-time customer data. It needs to be
something they can access when they’re working. That way, your rep is never
sitting there wondering whether or not he’s about to try to sell something to
an existing customer.
And yes, it’s happened
before when offices did not maintain good customer data.
5. You’ve set unrealistic expectations.
You need to know the
numbers that drive your sales activity down to the last percentage. You need to
know how many calls generate appointments and how many appointments generate
sales. Then, and only then, can you set realistic quotas. If it takes 80
appointments a month to reach your current quota, and there’s only time for a
reasonable rep to run 60 of them, then you’re setting your reps up for failure.
Make sure you evaluate your
compensation plan too—a reasonable quota should allow reps to make a reasonable
living. It should also allow reps time to exceed
that quota, and to make even more money.
6. You think blitz and rah-rah will motivate them.
That big sales contest
which will send someone to Hawaii might generate a burst of activity in the
short term, but it’s really only going to be effective in a sales department
that was healthy already. Short term feel-good hits can’t sustain a demoralized,
exhausted, and depressed sales team.
Focus on building a
positive, energized environment first. Then
you can break out the scoreboards.
7. You haven’t caught up to the current century.
Cold calling is getting
less and less effective, and in most industries it’s going to be unreasonable
to expect your sales team to generate business that way. Your marketing team
needs to be generating a steady stream of warm inbound leads instead. Your
sales team needs to stay active on social media to generate a few more of those
leads. Most people don’t answer their phones anymore.
Thus, you must find a way
to make customers call you.
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