An unanticipated response from one of my clients recently got me thinking. He’s a sales leader responsible for his company’s sales optimization project and when I asked him how things were going he replied, “We’ve seen pockets of real progress but I’m concerned our sales management may be stunting our growth.”
Hey, it happens. A masterful sales rep may move into sales management with little understanding of, and preparation for, what is fundamentally a very different role to that of “top sales dog.”
Being a visionary, a strategist and a sales expert are all integral to leadership success. But more important is your ability to build these skill sets within your team. Big results occur when the entire team is “enabled” to reach optimum performance rather than betting your success on the heroic efforts of a handful of managers.
So here’s the billion dollar question. “What are you doing to optimize the performance of your team?
Let me ask you … and I need you to be brutally honest to yourself… Do you have a closer relationship with your blackberry than with your sales team? Are you chained to your desk studying sales reports when you need to be out in the field observing sales behaviors? When the numbers are weak, is your response to issue the directive to simply “make more calls” or “book more meetings?” Do you realize you may be aggravating, rather than resolving, the problem?
Great sales leaders recognize that the numbers are the output of sales success, not the driver. And while, of course, you need to keep an eye on sales figures, your primary focus must be on the input. The input is the behaviors and activities of your team. And I’m talking quality, not just quantity, of activities.
Over the years I’ve noticed that three critical leader activities frequently take a back seat to other priorities. Each of them focuses on the “input” required for sales team success and, if executed consistently, can dramatically boost sustainable business results.
- Know your team
- Leverage your team
- Extend your team
1. Know your team.
Sales reps enthusiastically seek their leader’s advice. What baffled me for years was how unenthusiastically or ineffectively they would act on that advice. Of course there are times when giving advice is absolutely the right thing to do but a big “ah ha moment” happened for me when I was doing my professional coach certification. The reason Steve doesn’t execute John’s advice is simple. Steve isn’t John.
Let me share Julie’s story. Julie hated making “cold” calls. She came to me for coaching. I soon realized Julie knew exactly what to do – she just wasn’t doing it. I have no shortage of techniques to help with “call reluctance” but I knew this wasn’t what Julie needed.
I had learned that two things were very important to Julie … creativity and fun. So my input to Julie was to ask one question, “How can you bring a sense of creativity and fun to your cold calling?”
Two weeks later she returns for coaching and she’s smiling. She’s made a lot of calls, and booked a number of good meetings. Why the turn around? At first my question had confused her. But while shopping at Staples she found an aisle filled with sheets of stickers – and something clicked for her. That week, after making each call she applied a sticker to her call log – a happy face for a productive call, a sad face for a “no thanks,” and a straight face for a neutral response. Cold calling became more fun for Julie. The angst subsided enabling her to make more, and better, calls.
Could I have come up with this solution? Never! It was perfect for Julie because it came from within Julie. She just needed a catalyst.
Make the time to “know” your people. Become masterful at coaching them from the inside-out rather than simply advising from the outside-in. Be the catalyst for their greatness by having the right questions rather than the wrong answers.
2. Leverage your team.
You are a sales leader. You are not “perfection” in selling. Too many sales leaders put impossible expectations on themselves. They feel they need to be the most gifted seller, the most creative strategist and the pre-eminent source for all answers. Not true. If you strive to live up to this expectation you’ll burn yourself out and weaken your team. Neither of which are career-defining moments.
An effective leader relinquishes ego and recognizes that leadership qualities do not only reside at the top. And he /she looks for every opportunity to leverage this talent from within their team. If Jane is a superstar calling at the C-level, he will ask Jane to lead a session on executive calling at the next sales meeting. And he will have weaker reps shadow Jane on calls. Both Jane and the novice reps grow in the process.
A superior leader requires her reps to play a strategic role when it comes to gathering market intelligence. She knows her reps are face-to-face with prospects and customers daily, and that every customer call or meeting is an opportunity to gather information relating to market trends and priorities, buying processes and preferences, and competitive activity. All of which must be shared, and used, to support prospecting activity, marketing strategy and account growth.
And here’s something I’ve learned from working with multiple sales organizations across a wide range of industries. … Peer success galvanizes others into action. Savvy sales organizations leverage the heck out of this free motivational tool by creating a system to proactively encourage reps to share success stories. And while sharing outcomes is important, the real leverage resides in communicating the specific actions and behaviors that led to the positive results.
3. Extend your team.
Who in your company has the ability to influence and impact revenues and profits? Who do your customers openly share information with because they view them as a non-threatening resource that won’t turn every conversation into a sales pitch?
The answer? Everyone in your company who interacts with your customer on a frequent and regular basis. Your project managers, subject matter experts, support and service teams.
I’m shocked that so few sales organizations equip this extended sales arm with the appropriate skills to enable them to contribute to account growth. I’m not talking about creating a team of offensive telemarketing bullies. By “appropriate” I mean provide them with the critical observation skills, and questioning and listening smarts to enable them to recognize clues to new opportunity. Which they can then share with a sales pro who has the skills to close the deal.
The result is two-fold. Account growth and referrals that may otherwise have gone unnoticed. And a team of inspired employees whose jobs now feel more fulfilling as they contributes in valuable ways to their customer’s success and their company’s growth.
If you manage a sales team you know your success depends on your team’s ability and motivation to deliver strong results. Successful sales managers are ruthlessly focused on developing the right behaviours and activities within their team. They focus on the input so that ultimately they have output worth celebrating.
