Archive for May, 2009

with a positive financial impact assured!

If you have questions about the effectiveness of your sales development or marketing program, consider your sales growth objectives.

1. Are they realistic?
2. What is necessary to achieve them – reliably and cost-effectively?
3. Can your objectives be reached with your current sales coverage?
4. Are your salespeople practicing the art of selling – or the science of order production?

To answer these questions, and any others you may have, explore the methodology we use as described on our web site and then phone us about a Sales Performance Quality Assurance™ Audit

You’re looking for more and better salespeople, because you want more and higher profit  sales volume. You may not realize it, but you have two challenges:

1. Providing a good earnings opportunity to a new salesperson.

2. Sourcing and selecting high performance salespeople

The first challenge is first – for a reason. You can’t attract high performance salespeople if you don’t have a high productivity earnings opportunity. This means, in essence, providing effective sales support. You don’t do this because your salespeople are lazy, you provide support to make your salespeople more efficient. (Providing sales support gives you more control over the sales message and process.) See the April 6^th comment on, “Achieving Effective Sales Management”

To find more effective salespeople, you have to know what you’re looking for. This means establishing a specification based job description. You have to know what you want your salespeople to do, and you have to have a way to measure both potential (for candidates) and performance (for your salespeople).

Finding more effective salespeople also means using an executive search process to find and evaluate candidates.  This is necessary whether you’re seeking an employee salesperson or an independent rep agency.  For more details, see the pages under Salesperson Sourcing and Selection on this site.

If you have a sales force of primarily experienced salespeople, you must have asked yourself, “What can you do to improve their performance, while also improving the performance of the less experienced salespeople?” The short answer is, “Make it easier for them to close sales.”

The longer answer is that you can give them documented information about your products, its applications, your company’s administrative procedures, and about your competitors. To get you started, ask for Knotes & Comments 205: “High Performance Manufacturer Characteristics.”

You need information. Not necessarily more information, but better information.  It is up to your IT staff to record, compile, and organize this information for you, but you must know what information you need. You want objective information that is measurable, but you (sales management) have to specify what you want.

The key to getting the information you want is to upgrade the art of selling into the science of order production.  This is the function of Sales Performance Quality Assurance™.

First you have to document your sales process.  This means listing the information that must be assembled and exchanged.  In addition, you need to list the buying influences whose beliefs regarding your product and company must be formed.

The best way to do this is with an Account Data Sheet.  Then, simply put the Account Data Sheet form into your contact management software and make a copy for every prospect.  See Knotes & Comments 201C,  “Sales As A Production Process” for more guidance in doing this.

Or for establishing your plan, see Knotes & Comments 101C,  “If You Want Better Results . . .”