The competent carpenter’s saying is this: measure twice, cut once.
We know that selling is a complex role with many moving parts.
Producing great and consistent sales results as a salesperson and team is 80-90% reliant on Lead Indicators – the key Input Activities & Behaviours – the relevant knowledge, skills and mindset around sales & account planning, prospecting & new business development, solution selling & key account management, etc. that we, as professional sales people and teams, need to execute everyday on a consistent daily basis. The other 10-20% is reliant on the right sales strategy, sales processes & tools, training & coaching, and culture.
This is why we need to ensure that sales teams have access to regular training and coaching sessions across all those capabilities that is relevant and targeted to the right areas.
So how do we know what training and coaching salespeople and teams really need and when?
At Barrett, we often get calls to deliver training when a sales team’s results are falling or certain strategies are not working. We often get asked for closing skills and objection handling training.
Like any good salesperson, we have learned not to assume. So upon further investigation we usually discover that the sales teams do not need closing or objection handling training in of itself, it is often something quite different. It is a classic case of treating the symptoms, not the cause(s) of poor sales performance.
This is why we need to become better diagnosticians to uncover what really is happening. What is causing poor sales performance?
It could be that it’s the sales strategy or lack of process and good resources that is preventing sales teams from performing. If that is the case then fix that. But if it is a salesperson’s capabilities issue we need to do some further assessments.
We need to define the cause(s) and ask questions like:
- Is this issue only relevant to certain individuals or is it systemic across the team?
- Is it a skills issue, a knowledge issue, or a mindset/attitudinal issue?
- So, how do you know what training will help your sales team the most?
Let’s take a closer look at how the right assessments can help us diagnose what our people really need.
There are different kinds of assessments you can use to determine the gaps in your sales teams. While there are personality assessments, and aptitude & abilities assessments for instance, the quickest and best ways to get a handle on what your sales teams really need – diagnosing the cause(s) – is to use these kinds of assessments:
Sales Competency Based Self-assessments: these are self-rating assessments designed and calibrated around the core sales competencies essential for each type of sales role. Salespeople are invited to complete the assessment relevant to their role. Although not designed to recruitment grade standards, these types of assessments are an excellent way of raising conscious awareness about what the job requires and where salespeople are at as they relate to the minimum standards of sales excellence essential to their role.
Sales Behavioural & Attitudinal Assessments: These are recruitment grade psychometric assessment tools designed to get clear line of sight to key areas that can keep people from selling at their best. For example, by getting your salespeople to complete a sales attitude and activity based questionnaire you can measure things like call reluctance and the fear of self-promotion; identify if people are likely to avoid making phone calls to prospect, or give away margins or yield to clients every demands, or hesitate to prospect, and self-promote for new business, etc. You can also identify how much initiative, energy and drive an individual devotes to proactive business development and the amount of energy spent on coping with inhibitors such as fear. This type of information is very helpful to know as it helps you, as a sales leader, direct your training and coaching efforts toward the right cause(s) and treatments to help your salespeople get back on track and sell better faster.
When you assess your whole sales and service team, you can then combine results and find out very clearly where the team needs training. There’s not much point in training a team on new techniques if the problem is in their attitude, belief system or if they simply don’t know how to get themselves in front of clients to start with.
Sales Strategy & Operations Assessment: This is the opportunity for the sales team and other people across all areas of the organisation to rate the effectiveness of the organisation’s (or division) sales strategy and sales operations across 17 core dimensions.
So in the spirit of “measure twice, cut once”, diagnose the real cause(s) first based on relevant standards so you can deliver the right training and coaching to help your sales teams sell better faster.
Remember, everybody lives by selling something.
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