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Are your sales people at risk of leaving?

January 5, 2011 in Recruitment, Sales Planning, Strategy

How many of your sales people are thinking about a career move right now?

How many of them have come back from their holiday break wondering if they are in the right role or company?

Sales people are one of the highest “at risk” groups in terms of turnover (average of 26% compared to the national average of 14%).  Some industries have sales staff turnover up into the 70-80% range i.e. high churn call centres.

Some of the reasons sales people give in their notice is because:

  • they have not had the success they had hoped to achieve and have not attained their financial goals,
  • their capabilities did not match the job,
  • they are not getting adequate support by way of clear goals and direction, adequate product training and/or sales management support,
  • they feel discontented, and what was promised by the company was not the reality they came to know,
  • they are burnout through not having enough holidays (especially true for high performers),
  • poor leadership and poorly executed strategy have left them feeling disengaged and frustrated, or
  • they do not feel suited to a sales career.

High sales staff turnover is a costly problem.  Having sales staff on a company conveyor belt can lead to poor customer perceptions, poor service and the erosion of your brand.  This can further impair your recruitment of good staff and make it even more difficult to find good sales people.  Therefore, it makes good sense to manage this risk, maximise alignment and legitimise and protect an investment in sales performance improvement.

So how do we reduce high sales staff turnover?

One significant way is to improve Job Match.  Job Match is about clearly understanding what the job requires and what type of person best matches that job, then matching the job and the person as accurately and closely as possible.  This means not putting ‘just anyone’ into the job.  However, many people do so out of desperation but that desperation has costly consequences as you will see.

A significant study reported by Harvard Business Review showed how Job Match significantly affects staff turnover in sales teams.  The study looked at traditional ‘high turnover’ industries as well as traditional ‘low turnover’ industries. They compared sales staff turnover when Job Match was used and when it was not used.

Here are the findings:

HIGH Turnover Industry – Sample Size: 13,102

People with Job Match:
- % who quit or were fired after 6 months = 24%
- % who quit or were fired after 14 months = 28%

People without Job Match:
- % who quit or were fired after 6 months = 46%
- % who quit or were fired after 14 months = 57%

LOW Turnover Industry – Sample Size: 5,941

People with Job Match:
- % who quit or were fired after 6 months = 5%
- % who quit or were fired after 14 months = 8%

People without Job Match:
- % who quit or were fired after 6 months = 25%
- % who quit or were fired after 14 months = 34%

You can see quite clearly that using Job Match has a significant impact on sales staff turnover.  Job Match also affects job satisfaction and engagement.  For instance, job satisfaction and engagement (i.e. workforce alignment) can account for up to 23% difference in productivity.

Besides Job Match, what else can you do to ensure healthy sales staff retention?

Sales is a particularly challenging career.  In practically, in no other profession are mistakes or a lack of aptitude punished so mercilessly as in sales.  A deal is either concluded or not – there is no such thing as partial success.

In short, select wisely and help your people lead healthy sales careers.  This way you may reduce unnecessary sales staff turnover, have a healthier sales business and much happier sales people.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

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How much training should I give my sales team?

November 18, 2010 in Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Planning, Sales Training

Highly effective sales people and teams do not happen by chance.  A study by Aberdeen Group (2009) of 8,500 top performing companies with a turnover in excess of $50 million, showed that the highest performing of these in each of their industries provided their sales teams with no less than 8 days of focussed sales training per year, and this did not include product training.

Another Aberdeen Group Productivity report (2008) showed that top-performing sales organisations were 24% more likely than all other companies to either have in place, or have short-term plans to implement, formal sales training methodologies.

It is plausible that larger businesses can afford to, and do invest in, the development of their sales teams on a more consistent basis.  Usually supported by Learning & Development departments, access to the latest research and training providers, corporates and larger businesses can appear to have the upper hand when it comes to highly skilled sales and service teams.

Providing regular and quality training and coaching can prove to be a challenge for smaller businesses.  Finding the time to take your sales team out of the field to train them, getting access to quality, customised training content and quality trainers at an affordable price is problematic.  Too many ‘off the shelf’ sales programs aren’t usually flexible enough to meet most sales teams’ requirements and are often limited to simple transactional sales interactions or motivational ‘rah rah’ sessions.  However, for many SME sales teams to compete head to head with the skills of larger businesses they need to be trained in more complex selling skills and processes which include:

  • Sales and account planning
  • Prospecting skills and strategies
  • Consultative/diagnostics selling skills
  • Negotiation skills
  • Interpersonal communication skills
  • Public speaking, pitching and presentation skills
  • Account management and development
  • Business acumen
  • Deal making and proposal/tender writing
  • Self or time management
  • Self awareness, resilience and insight

So how can SME’s continue to develop the skills, knowledge and mindset of their sales teams even though they do not have the resources of a major corporate?  We need to be clever about creating a continuous learning environment in SME’s. Here are a few tips:

  1. Think about what standard you need your sales and customer service people to be operating at.  This will help you determine the type of training you need to provide them with.
  2. Assess what you feel confident delivering in-house and what you need to access from qualified, external providers.  Research your external providers and make sure they deliver practical, competency based training that can be taught and transferred to others.
  3. Map out a 12 month learning plan which provides regular learning sessions and has clear learning outcomes so you can check progress and skills and knowledge development.  Not all of your training need be full day workshops.  The best value is gained from ‘mini’ sessions of 30 minutes to 1 hour run regularly (fortnightly or at least every 4 weeks) interspersed with more formal classroom learning i.e. between 1-4 days per year on key topics where you need formal instruction.
  4. The mini learning sessions can focus on specific topics.  A great way to include everyone and create accountability for learning, is to allocate topics to your sales and customer service people and have each of them select a topic they will research and present to the team.  This helps you spread the learning load whilst giving your people the chance to practice their presentation skills.  Rotate these sessions amongst your sales team. Make sure the environment is supportive and constructive to encourage rather than discourage participation.
  5. Reading material is in abundance.  Giving your people access to free sales articles, such as the ones I write, can be used to assist further learning.  Many of our clients’ sales managers use these sales articles to aid their sales team development.  Whether they send it out as a topic to read or use the topic as a point for discussion in their sales meeting, they are creating a continuous learning environment.
  6. If you are going to invest in external development, a critical area is sales management and coaching.  This can have the greatest return on investment for you and your sales team in terms of their professional development.  Between 60-70% of a sales managers time should be devoted to people development.  We suggest you get yourself or your sales managers professionally trained as sales coaches and trainers.  For instance, we have built a Sales Leader’s Tool Kit which includes sales coaching field guides and mini skill, drill learning sessions that sales managers can run with their sales teams on a regular basis.  This equips them to run structured, well planned sessions, and aids the development of your sales teams and shows your commitment to their ongoing development.

SME’s don’t need to be left behind when it comes to having high performing sales and customer service teams.

Continuous learning is a conscious choice and does not happen by accident.  Whether you have access to large sums of money or not you can create a viable learning environment and continue to enhance the capabilities of your sales and service teams.

Start with the end in mind –sales mastery is a way of life not a fad.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

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Planning for 2011

November 11, 2010 in Marketing, Sales Planning, Sales Research, Sales Training

Budgeting and developing strategy for 2011 should be near the top of your ‘to-do’ list right now or be bedded down already.  People complain about being too busy and never having enough time, however if you do not make time for regular planning you will let everyone down.

Make time to work on:

  • Forecasting
  • Evaluating staff hiring and implementing staff development plans
  • Ensuring that your marketing calendar is planned through to June 2011 at a minimum

Right now we are working with several clients on their sales plans for 2011 as well as planning out their 2011 sales training schedule.

Here are several ideas for you to consider.  The questions below should be handed to each of your management team and each person should prepare their answers.  Ask them not to be soft in their responses, and to set aside some quiet time to apply the appropriate amount of thoughtful reflection and analysis in compiling their individual answers.  Have everyone compare their responses with the rest of the team at your next management meeting.  You may even like to reward authentic and well constructed ideas.

  1. What went well in the past 12 months?
  2. What did not work or go well?
  3. What are the key drivers influencing our market, our customers and our competitors?
  4. What are the key metrics that are giving us the right information?
  5. What are the risks we are facing internally and externally?
  6. What are the opportunities or ideas that could lead to better business growth, client retention and increased market share?
  7. What are the factors we know we will be facing in 2011?
  8. What are the assumptions we are making about the market in 2011?
  9. What were the assumptions we made in 2010?  Did they hold true and are they still true?

We use these questions and many more during our strategic sessions with clients and with ourselves to help everyone get on the same page and build a vision for each organisation.

A Best Practice hint: set a date!  For example, by 17 December 2010 all budgets, compensation plans and marketing programs must be completed.  This will keep everyone working towards that deadline.  That is what we will be doing at Barrett to ensure we are well set up for 2011.    Special thanks to John Garrido, our Director of Sales, for bringing this article to light.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

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Why Sales Managers need to work on the business, not just in the business

May 26, 2010 in Sales Management, Sales Planning, Strategy

Playing “catch up” is a common challenge for organisations of all sizes.  Whether you have enjoyed a period of rapid growth and prosperity, or encountered some unexpected obstacles or losses, with little warning, businesses can discover that their decision making and activity has become very reactive.  Too much time is spent putting out spot fires and reacting to situations, while too little time is spent on pro-active and strategic activities.

The very real and legitimate day to day business pressures result in many (if not most) decisions being made on an ad-hoc basis, with each one disconnected from the next.  The end result can be inefficiencies, unproductive sales teams, poor business performance or simply wide-spread frustration – leaders are reacting to the markets instead of acting with forethought and vision.  If left unchecked, this can become a way of life with disastrous consequences.

By contrast, high performing organisations (both small and large) anchor all tactical activity, decision making and effort to carefully considered and clearly understood strategic objectives which have been underpinned by the discipline of business planning, a capability necessary for all people at managerial level.  For clarity, the Encarta Dictionary defines planning as “a method of doing something that is worked out in advance”.  With this in mind, what business can afford not to?

With the move to a globalised business world, decisions once made with only the local market in mind now need to take in many more variables and more complex arrangements.  With this shift in market complexity we are seeing the need for Sales Managers of all levels to possess more strategic thinking and business planning capabilities if they are to lead and guide their sales teams to business success in the short and long term.

However the reality is that most Sales Managers, particularly at the state and regional level are not trained or equipped for strategic thinking and business planning.  From our observations in the field and, in particular, our work in Job Profiling, too many Sales Managers are leaning towards tactical skills and behaviours rather than the strategic.  They are often more comfortable working in the field sorting out products, deals and customer issues alongside their sales teams rather than stepping back and looking at the bigger picture.  This suggests that the Sales Managers are spending more time working in the business, rather than on the business.

The business world has fundamentally changed and with it has come the need for more sophisticated thinking and action, especially in sales.   Whether at a state, national or global level it makes perfect sense for our Sales Manager to be competent in these core capabilities for today and the future.

Dalrymple, Cron and DeCarlo, authors of ‘Sales Management’, state that the core competencies for the 21st Sales Manager are now:

  1. Strategic Action: Understanding the industry; Understanding the organisation; Taking strategic actions
  2. Coaching: Providing verbal feedback; Role modelling; Trust building
  3. Team Building: Designing teams; Creating a supportive environment; Managing team dynamics
  4. Self Management: Fostering integrity and ethical conduct; Managing and balancing personal drive ; Developing self awareness
  5. Global Perspective: Cultural knowledge and sensitivity; Global selling program
  6. Technology: Understanding new technology; Implementing sales force automation; Implementing customer relationship management (CRM)

How do your Sales Managers measure up?

What’s clear is that the 21st Century Sales Manager role at all levels requires an ability to plan, organise and monitor activity, projects and resources to deliver business outcomes and to support the business strategy.

With respect to the future training of all Sales Managers, we find we are encouraging the inclusion of business planning and strategic thinking as part of their training agenda, which will teach them how to plan for success both as a Business Manager and a Sales Manager.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

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Noise Reduction part 2: Is too much information making you miserable and losing you sales?

May 12, 2010 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, CRM, Sales Planning, Sales Research, Time Management

With information comes choice and without proper guidelines and filters in place, too much information and too many choices can lead to indecision.  Indecision can then lead to paralysis making us unhappy, unproductive, and at worst, ineffective.  In sales careers, or any role for that matter, too much information and the subsequent indecision is a real killer – in fact, making no decision is far worse than making the wrong decision.

Barry Schwartz, professor of social theory at Swarthmore College in the US and author of The Paradox of Choice states “too much choice is paralysing us and making us miserable”.   I can’t help but agree.  At times I feel I am drowning in a tsunami of information and feel increasingly confused as I try to work out what to focus on and what to discard.  I am not alone in these feelings; many people I speak to are also reporting feeling overwhelmed and anxious by all the ‘noise’.  Some are even checking out of mainstream information and news sources and choosing to dramatically reduce their diet of information.

In our haste to keep up, be on top of things, be seen as the one with all the answers, and be ahead of the pack, are we inadvertently creating a climate of confusion, indecision, and unnecessary distress by exposing ourselves and our teams to too much information?  I suggest the answer is ‘Yes’.

For instance, there is a learned behavioural syndrome called ‘Overpreparer’ which can account for 40%+ drop in sales productivity for sales people with Overpreparer tendencies.  It is often caused by  organisations placing undue importance on the need to be overly prepared and knowledgeable. Being prepared takes precedence over getting out and selling.  For instance, in banking and finance where compliance is important, Overpreparing is often systemic creating a culture of indecision and paralysis by analysis where sales people use it as an excuse to not prospect and sell.

Despite feeling out of control we can regain control over how we process, use and manage information.  Having a clear head and removing clutter from our lives is critical if we want to be productive and effective.  As promised in Noise Reduction part 1, here we will explore some strategies that may help us reduce the ‘noise’ and recalibrate our signal-to-ratio (SNR).  So in the spirit of less is more, here are some simple principles we can follow as a guide to effective noise reduction and decision making:

Step 1: Set clear goals

  • Clear goals help you determine what to focus on and what information you need to have at hand to help you achieve your goals.
  • Clear goals help you prioritise your thinking and actions, assisting you in planning each step of the way.

Step 2: Determine what you need to know

  • Put in place filters that will help you determine what information you want to focus on: Does this information help you get closer to the goals that are important to you?
  • Work out what is ‘essential’, ‘desirable’ and ‘nice-to-have’, and prioritise in that order.
  • Cultivate a scientific mindset – scientists begin by defining a hypothesis then look specifically for data or information that either corroborates or refutes that hypothesis.
  • Determine what information and networks your business and your sales people need to be aware of in order to make good decisions (i.e. market trends, competitors, product innovations, changes in legislation, etc.)
  • Find out what your clients are interested in reading and hearing.
  • Find sites and networks that keep you up to date with the latest trends and are quick and easy to read.
  • Make sure your CRM is collecting useful client and market information that is aligned to your goals and can be applied in a meaningful manner (i.e. creating client buying patterns report, etc.), then ignore the rest.

Step 3: Determine effectiveness

  • What information (blogs/references/forums/publications/social media sites/networks, etc.) are proving to be useful to you (your customers, your business and your communities)? Why?
  • Check why you originally chose this information or network sources and ask if they are still relevant.
  • Determine how often you use these information sources.
  • Check how you apply these information sources in your job or in your communication with each other and clients/suppliers (tangible outcomes, practical solutions, etc.)
  • Verify what is ‘fact’ and what is not.  Is it evidenced based?  Is it supplied by a reputable source that can be validated and checked?
  • Check how quickly it takes you to gain a quick and concise understanding of the content.

Step 4: Prioritise and don’t be afraid to limit your options

  • Count how many subscriptions you currently have or networks you belong to; check for duplications (i.e. similar blogs, sites or networks offering the same information) and irrelevant sites or networks (not aligned to your goals) then cull.
  • Reduce your ‘daily’ alerts to ‘weekly’ alerts.
  • Don’t check your emails every time they arrive, make time to check every 15-30 minutes or so.
  • Create a new email address exclusively for your subscriptions so your working email is not cluttered up with low priority data.
  • Synchronise your bookmarks.
  • Create a filing system that allows you to reference your information quickly and easily.
  • Link new information to what you already know.  Drawing concept maps is one such way that helps you to build knowledge over time and draw links between ideas and knowledge sources.
  • Allocate specific time twice or three times per week to review your subscription information sources rather than being constantly interrupted by incoming alerts.
  • If you need to surf the web, make time to do so when it doesn’t interfere with your work priorities.

Step 5: Find some quiet time

  • Allow your mind and your senses to rest and switch off.  Being overly anxious narrows your focus and limits your ability to sort through and process information effectively.
  • As strange and boring as this may sound, find time to do mundane tasks that do not require you to process complex information.
  • Do some regular exercise like yoga or go for a run to get in touch with your body, breath, heart and nature.
  • Meditation requires effort to achieve single pointed focus, however the daily practice of meditation quiets the busy mind and gives you the space you need to recharge and recover from information overload.

As you can see, even discussing reducing noise creates noise, and the signal-to-ratio spiral continues… Without running away to live in a cave, my best suggestion is to take on board a couple of things; stop reading about reducing noise and get out there and sell.  By staying focused on a few keys things and taking action we might just find that the noise fades into a faint, background murmur and we are happier and more productive as a result.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

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