Signs you are at risk of losing your top sales performers

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Signs you are at risk of losing your top sales performers

October 26, 2011 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Talent, Self Development, Success, Wellbeing Support Services

There they are every day bringing in the deals. They’re always prospecting, meeting clients, networking, making suggestions about how to do things even better and they never discount unnecessarily. Best of all your clients are happy. They’re happy with your offering, happy with your service, happy with the sales support they get and your business is profitable.

Top of the world

Sounds magnificent doesn’t it? Your top sales performer(s) require(s) very little work. They self manage, are resilient and are such a breeze to work with. They’re low maintenance and are not temperamental like those 600lb sales gorillas. You couldn’t be happier, right?

Well this is what most business owners or sales managers are thinking when they get a great sales performer. ‘So easy’ they say, ‘I wish all my sales people where like this’. And yes, we would love all our sales people to be self motivated, self disciplined, engaging people who cared as much about our businesses as we do while bringing in fantastic, sustainable sales results.

The temptation is to leave them alone and say ‘don’t fix what isn’t broken’. Many business leaders and sales managers take this approach. However, it’s precisely the wrong approach to take with top sales performers.
Let’s look at how much would it cost you to keep a top sales performer versus how much you would lose if they left your business.

Research continues to show that top sales performers love to learn and grow. The money is good but it is not the overriding factor. Instead they seek out opportunities to advance their skills, knowledge and mindset on a regular basis – they want to be the best. They strive for Mastery. The number one quality distinguishing top sales performers from their colleagues is their desire to engage in self-appraisal & continuous learning.

Here is what you are likely to see top sales performers doing on a regular basis besides selling:

Asking for feedback on their own performance and the degree to which they have met client expectations.
Collaborating with colleagues and not putting competitiveness in the way of business success.
Recognising and acting on the need for continuous self learning and development.
Appraising their own performance and competencies and initiates development activities without prompting.

These activities are often done without the support of management. Top performers create their own self development journeys and go outside to get the coaching, mentoring and nourishment they need.
This is admirable on the part of the sales person and it seems, great for the business leader/owner or sales manager. However, businesses are putting themselves at a huge disadvantage if this equation remains one-sided.

Why?

Because money isn’t enough. We might think that all we need to do is throw more money at top sales performers. Yes they deserve to earn top dollar but it’s more than that.

We need to take an interest their overall development. Provide them with opportunities to further develop their knowledge, skills and mindset. Give them opportunities. These can be to work with us on the business, take a mentoring or coaching role in our sales team, work on special projects, develop new markets or become our business’ key spokesperson. We can position our top performers as a champion an important aspect of our business or simply give them one-on-one time with us or a nominated coach who takes a particular interest in their development helping them to be even more effective.

Changing Jobs

The small investment of our time and attention to develop our sales superstars is far outweighed by their contribution to our business. Why risk it by ignoring the very people who make us a success? It seems logical but organizations make this mistake time and time again.

I hear so many stories from top sales performers who just up and leave organisations because they feel they were taken for granted. Here are some stories from top sales performers who have left companies because their requests for development were ignored:

“I wasn’t listened to. No interest was taken in me and my development. I had no respect as a professional business person. Management didn’t care about my professional development and dismissed me as only being ‘a salesperson’ because I did not have a business degree. They were only interested in me because I could bring in the deals. I tried to explain that it wasn’t only about the money and that I wanted more challenges to help the business grow. I had great ideas and wanted to step up. Instead they just told me to keep on selling and stay in my box. I felt ignored and taken for granted. I became tired, bored, and disillusioned with management and so I left. They went into free fall when I resigned and since leaving the business they keep coming back to me offering more money. They just don’t get it do they?’

‘My repeated requests to my manager for coaching and training were dismissed as too costly. I went outside to get the development I craved. My manager just wasn’t interested in giving me any of his time to coach me and certainly wasn’t interested in paying any money for my development. So I paid $3,000 of my own money for 6 one-on-one sales coaching sessions and they really helped. The benefits of one-on-one sales coaching were enormous. I achieved 130% of my budget in my first year and made the annual incentive trip overseas. My manager tried to claim the credit for my success. Needless to say into my second year nothing changed on the management front so after a further 9 months in solitude I left the company to pursue a career where personal development was valued.’

The cost of losing a top sales performer is enormous and it’s not until they are gone that most businesses realises its mistake. Are you at risk of losing someone who is vital to your business?

Before it’s too late ask your top sales people:

What they want by way of personal and professional development. Where would they like to take their careers? How would they like to contribute to the business? What ideas do they have about how we could be better?

Nourish these people with your interest in their ongoing development and show them that you genuinely care about their contribution and growth in your business – not just every now and again but continuously. If you make this a priority you will retain these top sales people and benefit. Make it a priority to do something to support them and let them know you really value and appreciate their contribution.

If you need to talk to someone about coaching or training in sales, sales leadership, sales coaching or people management contact us.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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

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Can a sales manager be an effective sales coach?

April 14, 2011 in Coaching, Performance Management, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Talent, Sales Training, Success

Coaching usually focuses on two areas of development to achieve excellence: skills and performance. Excellence in performance is knowing the right processes to apply in the right situation, coupled with the personal insight to know how to apply them wisely. An effective sales coach is there to help people achieve excellence and realize many more benefits.

However to be an effective sales coach your people must experience you as a support in helping them achieve higher performance and not a hindrance. Often people experience performance improvement initiatives as ‘threats’ or ‘aimless chats’ leaving people feeling negative, intimidated or that their time has been wasted.

For coaching to work at its best the relationship between coach and coachee must be one of partnership with trust, safety and minimal pressure. The pay cheque, promotion and performance axe have no place in a coaching relationship. Often, sales managers don’t know the difference between managing and coaching and find it hard to change hats when required. So can a sales manager reconcile the roles of manager and coach and can a manager really be an effective coach especially given time pressures and other competing priorities?

Barrett’s newly appointed Head of Coaching, Robyn Creed says ‘Yes, managers and especially sales managers can be fantastic coaches, however coaching demands the highest qualities of a manager.’

“Qualities include active listening, empathy, integrity, honesty, detachment and effective questioning. Coupled with this is a willingness to adopt a ‘performance enhancing’ mindset to staff development along with the skillful use of best practice coaching tools and frameworks. True coaches help people liberate their talent to realise mastery. Being able to set yourself a part from your managerial duties i.e. the KPI agenda, delivery of strategy, results, and firefighting and instead, approach each staff member as an individual when coaching, allows you to build a genuine coaching relationship. Creating a coaching climate can be a challenge for many managers mainly due to time constraints, competing priorities which often relegate coaching to ‘nice-to-have’ status, and the lack of proper training in effective coaching tools and strategies,’ Robyn said.

So how can a sales manager reconcile the roles of manager and coach? Knowing the difference helps. Review the following checklist on Managing and Coaching and see where you fall in relation to these roles.

Managers:
•   Do most of the talking and directing
•   Tell people how things should be done
•   Fix problems – sometimes preventing staff members from developing necessary skills
•   Presumes and makes assumptions (not having delved deeply into what is going on for an individual)
•   Seek control
•   Order people, provide directions
•   Works on
•   Keep distant
•   Assign blame

Coaches:
•   Spend most of the time in a coaching discussion listening to their staff member
•   Ask people how they think things should be
•   Prevent problems – when appropriate, skill people up to develop skills to manage situations effectively
•   Explore, providing staff with in-depth insight around a particular situation or what is going on with an individual)
•   Empower team member and seeks commitment
•   Allow people to develop their own path, but challenges when necessary
•   Work with (partnerships to develop skills and improve performance)
•   Make contact
•   Take responsibility (those who understand the importance of coaching appreciate the direct link between their coaching of their staff and their staff’s performance)

Many sales managers we work with have reviewed this list and realise they are not coaching at all. At best they have chats over coffee which is not the same as coaching. Yet they are ever concerned that their people may not be performing to the standard they require.

In 2005, the Sales Executive Council conducted a survey of over 3000 Sales Professionals and their sales managers. Some of their findings clearly demonstrate the difference in sales professionals’ performance based on the effectiveness of coaching. In this study there was at least 19% improvement in sales performance as a direct result of one-on-one coaching which meant the difference between people achieving their sales quotas or not.

Recent results from ICF Consumer Global Awareness Study reported that more than 42.6% of the respondents who had experienced coaching chose “Optimise individual and/or team performance” as their motivation for being coached. This reason ranked highest followed by “Expand professional career opportunities” at 38.8% followed by “Improve business management strategies” at 36.1%. Other more personalised motivations like “Increase self-esteem/self-confidence” and “Manage work/life balance” rated fourth and fifth to round out the top five motivations.

Coaching is key to performance improvement in any role. So why isn’t coaching prevalent in the daily lives of sales leaders and managers?

Lack of time is usually the issue. Finding time to coach is a real issue for these managers. Too many managers find themselves firefighting, unable to devote sufficient time to long term planning, visioning and most importantly coaching and developing their people. The paradox here is that if they coach their staff properly the staff will be capable of shouldering more responsibility, freeing the manager from firefighting and allowing them to be available to manage and coach their people and grow and develop the business.

So how do we get managers to engage in coaching?

Help sales managers see the real value in coaching including the dollars and sales it can return to the business. We need to help managers see that coaching delivers far more than the effort put into coaching however, if you have never experienced effective coaching you are unlikely to value it. One solution is for managers to experience professional coaching themselves and see how it helps them achieve excellence in their own role. Engaging an independent coach to work with a manager i.e. a ‘coach-the-coach’ experience has great benefits. Ideally sales managers would be trained in best practice coaching tools and strategies to give them the confidence and competence to coach. Another solution some managers are resorting to is outsourcing the coaching of their team members to independent coaches or internal people specifically trained and assigned to a coaching role thus leaving managers to manage. This is a trend in some industries such as call centres.

Robyn Creed says that outsourcing authentic coaching can really help people experience an agenda free environment helping them to shift and move to higher levels of performance without the complicated relationship of their managers. However, she does warn that abdicating coaching responsibilities as a manager is dangerous. ‘Managers should not avoid coaching’ says Robyn, ’The skills and mindset of coaching need to be ever present in a manager’s tool box, especially in sales. The opportunities to coach present themselves at any time and you have to be ready to seize the opportunity and know what to do.’ Robyn’s advice is to adopt a blended approach: ‘train your sales managers and other managers how to be effective coaches and then, when needed supplement this with highly trained external coaches. These coaches are best used to coach the managers who are coaching their own teams as well as for high performing sales people who need that to move to a higher plain.’

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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

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Transitioning from the old sales paradigm to the new world of social sales

February 2, 2011 in Communication, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Self Development, Social Media, Social Sales, Strategy

When I began my career as a professional sales person in the early 1980’s we were trained in product and client communication skills focusing on handling objections. We were given business cards, product brochures, a geographic territory of clients to manage and grow, and a car to get around in. We did not have mobile phones, let alone smart phones / tablets, laptops, or CRM’s. There was very little coaching and we were expected to make sales and make it work.

For a while there, let’s say 20+ years, it seemed like business as usual as many companies still clung to the Product Paradigm of Selling – ‘show up and throw up information’, however there were fundamental shifts of seismic proportions happening around us even back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. The transition from product to solution selling was one significant shift, however, this was just a pit stop on the way to the far more complex selling world we find ourselves in today.

28 years on the sales terrain is a very different proposition – the new world of social media, social selling, the importance of collaboration and the centrality of the customer – we are truly entering a customer focused world.

Product and Solutions (the aggregation of products) no longer offers the competitive edge in the sales process, the shift in value, beyond product and product solutions, lies in ideas, creativity, collaboration, interconnectedness and innovation and means that the types of conversations we have with customers, suppliers, referral partners and the like is at the centre of effective selling and business relationships.
And buyers are way ahead of most sales people. The conversations they are having about their suppliers, research they do before they buy, the journeys they take to purchase without any sales person’s involvement are important to watch and pay attention to. And that’s not all – we need to pay attention to what they do and say after the sale, how they talk about us, their points of view, the influence they have over others ideas and opinions and the circle just keeps getting wider. But are sales people and businesses keeping up.

According to Brian Fetherstonhaugh, Chairman and CEO of OgilvyOne Worldwide, Social media is having an enormous impact on buyer behaviour. OgilvyOne’s survey of a 1,000 sales professionals in US, UK, Brazil and China reported that 49% of sellers see social media as important to their success and amongst the most successful sales people, over two thirds believe social media is integral to their success. However most companies are not adapting fast enough. They are not providing training in how to effectively use social media to sell and nearly half the sales professionals surveyed believe their companies are afraid of letting employees use social media.

Only 9% of US sales people say their companies train or educate them in social media while in contrast 25% of sales people surveyed in Brazil said they received training and education in social media.
This rapid change is unprecedented. With the rapid rise of social media, the focus on innovation, value beyond product and the increasingly complexity of business networks and communities, I have found myself looking back and looking forward working out what I need to leave behind and what I need to take with me into the future.

For those sales professionals who started their careers in the last 5-10 years this article may not mean much to you, however for those of us who have longer careers in selling we are faced with significant change.

What have found to remain true and I can carry forward from my early days in selling are the following:

Keep Prospecting – it is vital to make contact and keep in contact with customers, prospects, influencers, suppliers, partners, etc.
Review and Strategic Action– always review where your market, customers and competitors are and check for signs of change so you can adapt and take strategic action. Most people would call this planning but with change happening so rapidly it’s more like review and strategic action is a constant daily occurrence
Prioritisation – even more so now than ever before is the important skill of prioritisation. There is so much information: emails, special interest groups, new innovations and the like to keep on top it can be overwhelming without some form of prioritisation skills
Questioning and listening – always a main stay in any person’s, especially a sales person’s tool box. The listening acuity we now need means we need to pay more attention to the details of our clients’ conversations, needs and priorities while keeping a keen ear and eye on the broader landscape. Asking the right questions is critical.
Problem Solving and Prevention, Creativity and Innovation – again the idea that product was king is now dead; one of the key skills is to prevent and where necessary solve problem for people, but that is only part of the game now – we now need to generate ideas and create opportunities, imagination and innovation now stand tall.
Adapting to different Communication styles – with global reach comes the need to interact with a wide variety for people and adapt to difference, not difficulty
Manners and courtesy – despite what people may say about the current state of the world, manners and courtesy are the glue that hold our relationships together. No matter what we call it, courtesy and manners are NOT trivial. Here is how Edmund Burke (1729-1797) described it: “Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in.”

So what do I have had to integrate from the new, so far:

Digital communication, destinations and New Listening Skills. The need to look out for the digital footprints of buyers as they trawl the digital world. Mapping buyers journeys before they talk to sales people and setting up the right forums, websites, blogs, connections, opinions, etc. for them to connect to before we even speak as human beings is critical.
Interacting with special interest groups on the internet – looking to exchange ideas rather selling or blatant self promotion.
Selling is a Team Sport – marketing, sales, and customers are all in it together
Prospecting online – the shift from lists, Yellow Pages, etc to avenues such as Linkedin where a rich vein of data, contacts, prospects are available to be researched and connected to.

Much has change in the world of selling and more changes are afoot. I’m holding on as best I can, trying to get my balance as I transition from the old paradigm of selling to the new world of social sales. So watch this space.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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

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The Yin Yang of Selling

December 9, 2010 in Sales Assessments, Sales Leadership, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Value Creation

In the 20th century the emphasis on B2B selling had a distinct aggressive ring to it. So much so, that you could walk down the halls of many businesses and think that you were involved in big game hunting. Many of these teams saw selling as an extreme sport, or more precisely, Big Game Fishing or Hunting.

Customers were ‘Targets’.
Getting a sale was referred to as ‘the Kill’.
Customers were regarded as objects to be possessed or trophies to be placed in their cabinet; to be shown off and admired (perversely so) like stuffed animal heads on the wall.

Little regard was really paid to building genuine relationships and developing real value. It was in essences an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ approach. And if you tried to develop deeper relationships it was seen as wimpy and soft. For instance, I can recall hearing of the death of one of my long standing clients, who died tragically in a plane crash when I was working as a recruiter many years ago. Upon hearing the news I found myself crying quietly at my desk at the loss of this lovely man. A few minutes later one of our senior managers found me and asked me why I was crying, and when I told him why, he just said “get over it, it’s only a client”. Extreme I know, however I have overheard many sales people speak about their clients in disparaging and disrespectful ways with little regard for the value of genuine relationships built on trust and transparency.

So why title this post as the Yin Yang of Selling? Yin Yang are complementary opposites that interact within a greater whole, as part of a dynamic system. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, but either of these aspects may manifest more strongly in particular objects, and may ebb or flow over time. There is a perception (especially in the West) that yin and yang correspond to good and evil (not respectively). However, Taoist philosophy generally discounts good/bad distinctions and other dichotomous moral judgments, in preference to the idea of balance.

I propose that the profession of selling has been out of balance for some time and to its detriment. If we look at how selling has been evolving over the last 50 years, we can see a distinct shift occurring from the aggressive one sided approach where conquest was king (too much yang) to a more delicate balance between the masculine and feminine aspects of yin yang.

It cannot be denied that selling requires yang – a proactive, focused, go-out-into-the-world and find opportunity approach (prospecting) however, selling must now be balanced with the ability to genuinely listen and respond to the subtleties of more complex relationships which involves patience, nurturing, and dealing with ambiguity which is yin. Think of the types of conversations you now need to have with your prospective customers where listening, questioning, resolving problems, collaboration, empathy and understanding are encouraged.

This is not just a fantasy. In reviewing the latest research on elite sale performers, gender differences in sales capabilities were found; women rated significantly higher than men on 5 of the 7 emerging competencies which gave them a distinct advantage in selling. Some of these capabilities included:

listening beyond the product needs;
engaging in self appraisal and continuous learning;
orchestrating internal resources;
aligning customer/supplier strategic objectives; and
establishing a vision of a committed customer.

These capabilities are in the realm of yin. May I suggest that we encourage more yin yang to assist us on our sales journey and encourage more success! To find out how you can achieve this in your team or career, have a look at the sales training that we provide for sales people, sales teams and sales leaders.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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

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How can we learn from our best sales performers?

November 4, 2010 in Sales Leadership, Sales Talent, Sales Training

How do we get the rest of our sales team learning from our top performers? Should we get our top sales performer in front of our sales team to teach them how to be more effective?

Well that all depends…

How well does that top sales performer understand how and why they sell well?
Can they articulate what they do in a step by step process?
Can they teach to the others in a simple and meaningful way?
Do they want to teach others?

The reality is that most top sales performers are unaware of what makes them ‘good’ which in turn makes it really hard for them to transfer and teach what they know and do to others. So how do we capture their talent, knowledge, skill or wisdom?

Job Design
One way of teaching our sales people what our best performers do is to first profile these sales superstars by using a Job Design process to map the core capabilities or competencies of top sales performers. By mapping the core capabilities or competencies of our best sales performers we make explicit the behaviours expected for effective performance in the role, and these behaviours can be easily observed in selection, development planning and performance assessment contexts.

Sadly, many organisations use generic capability or competency definitions for profiling, development and succession planning of their people if they use anything at all. However, our research has revealed that these generic competency definitions are often too generalised and not relevant to specialised roles such as sales. This drastically diminished their usefulness in performance development, coaching, talent management and so on.

A Job Design process can provide very specific behavioural criteria for all levels of sales and service roles. Once mapped, they can be implemented into recruitment kits, performance management systems, coaching, succession planning and induction processes.

Video Role Modelling
Another way is to video tape our top sales performers performing true to life role plays where they can demonstrate their sales capabilities across the sales spectrum. This works most effectively when we have a sales process that can be followed and the sales people we want to teach can see the process in action and how it’s supposed to be done via the video. If we then combine this with capabilities developed from the Job Design process, those sales people we want to teach can see the behavioral markers being applied for themselves.

And besides, positioned properly, it’s great kudos for the top sales performers and can really be an aspirational target for sales people to aim for. If you are fortunate to have a team large enough to have several top performers, video tape them all and make them available to your team. Kath Podnar, GM Sales for Jeans West, knows how effective this can be. This forms a part of their ongoing education of their front line staff, is easy to set up and inexpensive to do.

Modelling good sales capability is like learning to dance. We watch the dance moves performed by an experienced dancer while listening to the rhythm, and then we try it out for ourselves and practice, practice, practice.

Making clear and explicit the behaviours you expect to be applied in a sales role is key. Linking them to a clear sales process and giving people examples of others who can model and apply the desired behaviours and process well helps people learn more effectively.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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

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