All business owners want their salespeople to perform consistently.   Unfortunately, the vast majority of salespeople don’t even come close.

While mediocre sales performance often results from multiple components, one problem is nearly universal.   This pervasive success-killer exists in almost every private business, as well as in most large public companies.   Fortunately, the problem can be reduced or completely eliminated fairly easily, leading to significant improvements in your overall sales growth and profit picture. 

If you are like most private company owners, you have a highly dysfunctional, relationship with your salespeople.   This co-dependent dysfunction is mostly hidden from view, so it typically goes unnoticed until it is too late. Let’s call it the I-Can-Do-It Syndrome (ICDI).

Like most co-dependent dysfunctions, ICDI creates a feeling of near-term gratification for those involved.  Owners and salespeople may even feel like they are doing the “right thing”.   Unfortunately, the syndrome quickly creates habits that are highly destructive, ultimately preventing everyone from achieving what they really want, to exceed their sales goals and make more money.

ICDI Syndrome creeps in like a virus, then quickly becomes a transparent part of your system, allowing it to destroy from within.  Here’s how it happens:

You want to grow your sales, so you decide to hire someone to sell.    You recruit and hire a candidate you believe to be the best salesperson.    Following what I hope is a great training and on-boarding program, your new salesperson is ready to hit the ground running and set new sales records for you.  Then reality sets in.

YOUR REALITY:

As an SMB owner, it is highly likely that:

1.          Your company has more things to do than hours each week to get them done.  (Unplanned stuff happens all the time…)

2.          Most (or all) employees in your company wear more than one hat.

3.          Some issues and urgencies pop up that reside outside of any particular employee’s job description.  No one “owns” these issues, but you have good, loyal employees that are willing to chip in to try to resolve them.

4.          You may not have a competent, full-time sales manager (in fact, many private companies do not have anyone that ever consistently manages sales to keep salespeople focused and productive).

5.          If you want your salespeople to achieve their sales goals, you should clear the deck to make sure they spend all of their time selling.

YOUR SALESPERSON’S REALITY:

1.          In sales, Time = Money.   If a salesperson does not invest the time necessary to sell, they will fall short of their goals.   If they don’t sell, they won’t sell.

2.          Believe it or not, most “salespeople” in the market today entered sales by default.   Consequently, most really do not like to sell.

3.          Of the ones that do like to sell, the majority don’t really know how to sell effectively.

4.          All salespeople (and managers and owners) behave as they do, because that is how they choose to behave.

5.          Given the choice, most salespeople will choose to stay inside their Comfort Zone by doing the easiest (and least effective) parts of “selling”.   Some easy sales activities include:

·                 Sending emails

·                 Preparing proposals

·                 Entertaining (golf, lunches, etc.)

·                 Calling hot, pre-qualified leads

·                 Giving presentations

·                 Demos

6.          Conversely, most salespeople also choose to avoid doing the more challenging (but most effective) parts of selling, the ones required to perform consistently.  Some examples are:

·                 Consistent prospecting

·                 Asking “tough”, assertive questions

·                 Gaining Commitments from buyers.

·                 Executing their critical daily sales activities with discipline

·                 Calling decision makers, key targets and influencers, including cold or warm leads

·                 Active, empathetic listening

·                 Maintaining an Unconditional Commitment to Continuous Improvement

·                 Uncovering true buying motives and budgets

·                 Proactively seeking accountability

·                 Leaving one’s Comfort Zone

7.          Given the choice between executing the effective sales activities which require leaving one’s Comfort Zone, or doing just about anything else, many salespeople would be happy to simply be a good team player and:

·                 Handle customer service issues

·                 Fix a broken pipe

·                 Put out a fire

·                 Take unqualified incoming calls (including social ones)

·                 Do some internet research (or other related surfing activities)

·                 Pick up lunch, deliver a package, run errands, etc.

Here’s the bottom line.   Just about every activity your sales team performs in sections #5 and #7 above carry a huge opportunity cost, because they are done in place of the critical activities outlined in section #6 that are required to grow sales.

In order to generate sales on a consistent basis, your salesperson must start by SELLING on a consistent basis.    It’s simple math.  Even if a salesperson is weak, they will still sell more if they spend more time selling.

So, if you are a business owner or leader truly committed to growing your sales, I would urge you look closely at how much time your salespeople actually spend selling, and to evaluate if ICDI Syndrome may have crept into your company with some or all of your salespeople.  Then take action.

Remember, if they don’t sell, they won’t sell.

The choice is now yours.  The transformation of any sales organization begins by changing the beliefs, choices, declarations and behaviors of the owner.

It is for you to decide, and clearly articulate, how your salespeople are expected to invest their time and to decide what steps you will take today in order to clear the decks to ensure they will invest it properly.

Best wishes for your continued success…

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2019.   All Rights Reserved.

Over the last two decades, Z3 Performance Development has helped many hundreds of business owners and CEOs build world-class sales organizations.  During this time, I’ve also personally observed several thousand companies struggle mightily to achieve better sales results (most of them never break out).

From my vantage point (and tons of additional research), the difference between those companies that create consistent, predictive, profitable, scalable, effective sales teams and those that continuously wallow in mediocrity has become abundantly clear. The difference can be summarized in just two words.

I’d love to tell you that the difference between superior and inferior sales teams lies in some unique recipe, magical formula, newly discovered revelation, or space-aged technology; in some type of quick fix. But that simply is not true. Before I share the two words that make the difference, let me start by sharing some popular misconceptions–tactics that many CEOs think may be the difference, but are not.

The difference between a great and a mediocre sales team never lies in…:

1. A sophisticated reporting system.

2. A phenomenal sales compensation or incentive plan.

3. A complex CRM or sales automation system.

4. Paying big bucks to sales recruiters.

5. Sales Manager ride-alongs

6. Motivational speakers  

7. Group Sales Meetings

8. The latest and greatest new sales webinar, LMS, training program, or YouTube video.

Although some of the above strategies, and several other sales improvement tactics or philosophies, may add some incremental improvement to some sales organizations under certain conditions, none of these items (or even the combination of all of them) will create a superior, consistent sales organization.  The difference is much more fundamental.

Predictable, visible, profitable growth is simply borne out of PROCESS and DISCIPLINE.

Process & Discipline. So, if you are struggling, these two words are the difference between where you are today, and a reliable, effective, world-class sales organization.

Here’s just a few reasons why a solution based upon Process & Discipline (P&D) is such great news:

·         The P&D Solution is time-tested and battle-tested, removing all mystery. P&D doesn’t operate on a “let’s try this to see what happens…”. You need not worry if it is “going to work”. It does.

·         P&D works EVERY time, for every type of sales organization, market, product, or service.

·         P&D works for sales teams of all sizes.  It doesn’t matter if you have 1 or 1,000 salespeople.

·         P&D becomes a behavioral rhythm in your organization, creating a world-class sales culture.

·         P&D is the least expensive potential solution. It is a highly profitable approach. Once you’ve implemented effective sales, sales management, sales recruiting, sales assessment, and on-boarding processes, you have NO additional incremental costs. You and your team simply need to maintain the discipline (habits) to execute your processes (in the same way your payroll department pays employees with discipline).

·         P&D is highly visible. This approach produces all sorts of leading indicators that will provide objective insight into your true sales pipeline, future business, trends, and accurate forecasting.

·         P&D is incredibly time effective. Your salespeople and manager(s) will be spending their precious time generating new, profitable sales growth instead of wasting it on distractions, CYA, and other useless activities that cut deeply into missed opportunities and margins. 

Whether you’re just beginning to develop a new sales team, or whether you’ve been seeking ways to improve an existing one, I strongly encourage you to seriously evaluate where your sales organization resides with regard to Process and Discipline. If there are deficits in either, I can promise you that these deficits are costing you dearly.

If you need more information or have any questions, please let me know.

If not, please share your success stories that result from implementing a P&D solution.  I’d love to hear from you.

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2019.   All Rights Reserved.

Whenever a sales rep isn’t performing, it is time for swift and decisive action.  Let’s say our rep (we’ll call him John) is falling short of his goals. Depending upon the extent to which John’s performance is lacking, our actions may include a review and evaluation of your organization’s overall on-boarding, sales and sales management processes, additional coaching, and possibly a Focused Success Plan.  How John responds will determine his future success with your company, or a decision to terminate employment.

Since no employee (or company) is perfect, this entire review and upgrade process offers your company a great opportunity to learn, grow, and improve its team sales team effectiveness while simultaneously providing John with the opportunity to step up or move on.

Everyone has slumps, but even if there’s a good reason for John’s struggles, the fact remains that sales is a performance business.  If any one of your reps is not consistently meeting expectations and posting sufficient numbers, you’re not doing your job.   So it’s on you, the sales manager, to help John to rapidly improve, while supporting the rest of your team and holding them accountable to their commitments and results.

Sales is a Performance Game

A World Class Sales Team consists of superior players, coaches, and leadership.  Additionally, every individual on the Team must be committed to Continuous Improvement.

Because Selling Effectiveness is truly a numbers game, an effective sales manager should never need to fire a sales rep.   This does NOT mean that every sales candidate you hire will succeed, it simply means that their individual PERFORMANCE will determine if they continue being part of your team. From the onset, every player on your team should clearly understand exactly what is expected from them in terms of results, activity, process, reporting, personal development, and team contribution. They should also clearly understand the rewards of their success, or the consequences of missing their expectations.

If your company has a long history, with lots of supporting data, the expectation-setting process can be quite simple. If you are leading a younger company with less history, you may need to make some educated guesses about numbers, metrics, activity, and more, and perhaps pay close attention until you can get dialed into a sales rep’s ideal Recipe for Sales Success.  But no matter how early-stage your company may be, do NOT let your lack of history prevent you from establishing clear expectations.

Setting expectations need not be complex. When all is said and done, sales success boils down to a very few components.  At a minimum, these include ACTIVITY VOLUME and EFFECTIVENESS. In baseball terms, sales success equals total hits (or total bases).  The more times John gets up to bat (Activity Volume) to swing (aka: pick up the phone and connect with a qualified prospect), the more hits he will get and the more times he will score.  This is the case even if John is swinging with his eyes closed.  It’s just math–a batter that swings 1000 times WILL get more hits than one that swings 25 times.

The second component of sales success is having EFFECTIVE CONVERSATIONS.  If John is getting plenty of swings, but his batting average (conversion percentage) is low, he’ll need to change something (perhaps multiple things) about how he manages his sales interactions.  As part of John’s on-boarding and expectation-setting, it should have been made clear to him the HE is 100% responsible for the following:

1.           His Sales Goal: annual, quarterly, and perhaps monthly expectations and commitments.

2.           Effective Deployment of his Success Recipe: the total volume of activities, calls, conversations, meetings, etc., that if executed faithfully, will exceed his Sales Goal.

3.           Asking for help:  John should never wait for you to ask him if he needs help. He should know this.  If John is not generating his committed sales results, and if he cannot figure out why, it is HIS responsibility to ask you (and perhaps other teammates) for help BEFORE he digs himself deeply into a hole.

4.           As a matter of process, John (and all members of your team) should know they are expected to meet weekly for a short, but highly structured meeting with you as their sales manager. The purpose of this meeting is to report to you (and to themselves) if they are effectively executing their Success Recipe and to tell you their specific plans for next week, what they are doing to improve their effectiveness, and where they may need help.  This meeting offers is a huge opportunity for them to grow and prosper, and an opportunity for you to provide coaching, guidance, and motivation.

5.           If all this is happening (or even if it isn’t), but John is STILL falling behind his sales targets, it is likely time to consider placing him on a Focused Success Plan (FSP).

6.           Before proceeding with an FSP, you should make an honest assessment of whether John’s performance issues are related to Aptitude (including Habits and Behavior) or Attitude (Outlook, Responsibility, Coachability, Motivation).  In many cases, a rep that is performing weakly due to Aptitude can often be dramatically improved, while one with an Attitude problem is much more difficult and can often poison your troops during the process.  If you feel your rep may have Attitude issues, I would recommend having a very direct conversation before proceeding to determine if it even make sense to start with an FSP.

The Focused Success Plan (FSP)

As mentioned above, a sales rep should never be surprised that they’re not doing well or that they may be on the verge of losing their job. Transparency is a cornerstone of all World Class Sales Organizations.

Transparency allows everyone on a team to measure themselves against their goals and commitments at any time, in real time, without having to wait until the final week of the quarter or year.  In other words, it should never come as a surprise to John that he has been falling short.  In fact, John should be the FIRST to know that he is falling short of his commitments.   He should know exactly what the score is and exactly how much time is left on the clock.

Furthermore, members of a world-class team should carry very high expectations, so your players should be given lots of support and every chance to improve.   A lot of time, energy, and effort go into the recruiting and on-boarding processes, so when a rep is struggling, barring unusual circumstances, it typically makes sense to dig deep one final time before removing him from the team.  It’s possible (although unlikely) that John has simply been unlucky, or that part of the reason for his weak performance lies within the training, management, or on-boarding process.  To account for any of these possibilities, it is prudent to give John a second chance, the FSP.

During the FSP, the responsibility and pressure for John to hit his number is ratcheted up considerably.  You will be personally be investing more effort in training and coaching, so in the spirit of transparency and fairness, John should know that he will undergo more intense scrutiny.  The FSP should never be considered a last-ditch effort, like a time bomb counting down to John’s ultimate demise. It should be considered a focused opportunity to make a concerted effort to improve and re-establish his prestigious position on your world-class team.

The FSP Structure

Over the next week, schedule a meeting with John to inform him that due to his lackluster sales performance, he is being placed on a Focused Success Plan, effective (insert date).  This will be a 90-day plan, by the end of which John will be expected to be hitting at least X% of his monthly quota (90% is a good benchmark).   It’s important to explain that you do not expect him to make up for lost time or previously missed quotas, but rather to get on a path where he is operating at or near full-productivity for the next quarter.  Help John to break down the 90-day plan into smaller, more manageable milestones (help him to generate a very granular Success Recipe that outlines his daily and weekly activity commitments):

·         After Month 1, John should be improving and hitting between 10 to 25% of his monthly goal-to-date.  Be careful not to make John feel that missing his first month Sales Goal is catastrophic – it’s not – but it is critical that he at least shows signs of improvement (in both activity and effectiveness).  However, you should also let him know that at this point he must start ramping up to full productivity.

·         After Month 2, the gap should be closed even further.  By this point, John should have hit at least 50% of his monthly target.  Perhaps more importantly, his dedication to improve should be readily apparent – he should be performing a much higher volume of activities much more effectively, and gaining more commitments in his conversations with sales prospects. He should be much more proactive in seeking help and all aspects of his behavior.  He should also be much more dedicated to sales coaching and training.

·         After Month 3, John should effectively resemble a new Marine recently emerging from Boot Camp, a new more confident player, a lean, mean fighting machine ready to take on the world. He should be performing very close to a fully-ramped rep, hitting his monthly number and tracking near or according to plan (~ 90%). If his Sales Goal result ends up a just a stitch short of his number at 90 days, you can cut him a little slack.  A FSP does feel like Boot Camp to a sales rep.  If John has worked his butt off to develop new habits that produce consistent, effective behavior and continuous improvement, these are leading indicators of good things to come.

If John misses any of his Success Recipe metrics or milestones at any point early in the plan (or if you observe any type of excuse-making or behavior that indicates he simply isn’t going to get there), have a serious conversation with him about whether or not this is the right job for him.   It may be better for everyone that John uses the last month or two to get a head start on his next job search, rather than expending extensive effort on his improvement if he’s clearly not a great long-term fit.

But again, that’s not the goal. This is a SUCCESS Plan.  Your desire is to help save John!  And it can happen, within this three-month time period, with a highly structured, focused, and personalized coaching effort.

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2019.   All Rights Reserved.

Over the last year, I have interviewed over 100 salespeople on behalf of our clients.   I asked every one of them at the onset to describe their sales approach or methodology.   In over 85% of cases, the candidate replied with some form of “I am a consultative salesperson!”

In light of the 93,000 articles that have recently been written about the importance of consultative selling and the enormous impact it has in today’s selling environment, I would fully expect any sales candidate that hasn’t been living in isolation to say they sell consultatively.  Step One—Correct Answer!

Unfortunately, after 15 minutes of dialogue with each of these “consultative” salespeople, less than 15% of all candidates asked 3 or more questions!!!  In fact, the vast majority hung up the phone without learning a thing about what I was looking for, why I was talking with them, what success looked like, my role in the hiring decision, or any other vital information.   So much for being consultative…

A few quick facts…:

1.       Talking about consultative selling and actually selling consultatively are two completely different things.  It doesn’t matter if you can say it.   It only matters if you can do it.

2.       Consultative selling mandates that a salesperson ask critical, timely, tough questions.

3.       It also requires pushing back and challenging when 1+1 does not equal 2, in an assertive, yet respectful, manner. 

4.       The VAST majority of salespeople fail here, not because the questions are difficult, but because the questions cannot be scripted in advance.

A salesperson’s questions should almost always result directly from the prospect’s most recent response.  This is where the problem usually begins.   If you are one of those individuals who resembles my remarks and wishes to stop fooling yourself into believing you are selling consultatively, here are several critical personal attributes necessary to begin walking your talk and selling much more effectively.

Child-like Curiosity:  Consultative salespeople behave much more like children than like experts, continually challenging their own assumptions and asking their prospects to tell them more about what they are hearing.  Weak salespeople rarely ask prospects to explain anything.

Sincere Interest:   Don’t act sincerely interested, BE sincerely interested.

Listening:  Many salespeople lack even the most primary listening skills.  Listening skills can be developed, but the journey must begin by being honest with oneself.   Start by asking:  “Am I really listening, or simply waiting to talk?”

Unselfishness:    Many people, and most salespeople, find it very difficult to focus entirely on what someone else is saying without reacting emotionally about how the words affect themselves.  A ME-centered salesperson will never hear everything their prospects are really telling them.

Patience:  Salespeople cannot wait to talk about what they sell and how it helps.  Consequently, they avoid asking more questions for fear that doing so may delay their presentation, demo, or proposal.   These weak salespeople feel better talking about how great they are because they are more confident in their ability to talk, present, and pitch than in their ability to ask, listen, and learn.  This dysfunctional cycle actually moves them backwards instead of forward.  Effective salespeople slow down and go much deeper and wider with their discovery and investigations.   Believe it or not, this actually saves them time.

MORE Patience: - Part of the reason that most of the candidates told me they are selling consultatively is that they actually believe it!   They believe they are selling consultatively when they have asked a few questions.  Unfortunately for them, they aren’t even scratching the surface until they’ve asked 3 to 4 dozen of them.  And these are NOT scripted questions, rehearsed or recited from a list.  We are talking here about 40 or 50 spontaneous, inquisitive, thought-provoking follow-up questions to one, or perhaps two opening questions the salesperson asked during the first few minutes.

You’ll notice that each of the items I’ve listed here are foundational qualities of mindset, choice and attitude, versus manipulative tactics or techniques.  Each item can be developed and dramatically improved via an honest self-assessment, a commitment, and some recurrent practice.  You can quickly accelerate your development by associating with a coach and peer group.

Enjoy the Journey…

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2019.   All Rights Reserved.

In late 2018, Salesforce.com published its third annual State of Sales report.   Among other interesting facts, the research report concluded that 57% of salespeople expected to miss their annual quota.   Various other studies have reported success rates even worse.  In the past, Salesforce has reported that 77% expect to miss their goal.  Think about that—3 of every 4 reps will fail.   Independent of the data you choose to believe, the odds say that you are likely to fail as well.

With all of the books, articles, podcasts, videos, and training programs available to salespeople today, how can the success rates be so pathetic?  Can you think of any other profession (or other departments in your company) where performance is so weak?

Having run a Sales Development company for over two decades, these results do not surprise me.  What does continue to surprise me is the willingness among some salespeople (and business owners) to continue to tolerate this pathetic level of performance.  Most continue to try the same approach and expect a different result.   Good luck to that.

If you have already cracked the code to consistent selling effectiveness, congratulations!   If not, please understand that sales success is not complicated.   It is extremely formulaic and relatively simple, but it isn’t easy.   However, for many people (aka:  the two thirds that are consistently failing) it does require a commitment to change.

Change takes courage.   If you have the courage to commit to changing, here are just a few things to consider to tip the odds of sales success in your favor and begin your transformation.  There is nothing magic here and I’ve written about this before.   You may have heard similar recommendations for improving sales effectiveness elsewhere, but knowing and not doing is not really knowing, right?

1.   If you don’t have a Sales Process, adopt an effective one:  A process is not a strategy, a model, an approach, or a philosophy.  It is a specific series of steps that leads to a result. 

a.     Hint #1:  less than 5% of private companies have any sales process.

b.     Hint #2:  If you can’t describe your sales process in detail, and if all of your salespeople wouldn’t describe it exactly like you do, you don’t have one.

2.   Adopt an effective Sales Management Process:   If you are serious about maximizing sales success and ROI, effective management is vital.   Selling is a performance/production activity, and all effective result-producers need a coach.   Even if you have only one salesperson in your company, effective sales management will pay huge dividends.   This doesn’t mean that you need to hire a full-time sales manager, but it does mean that a portion of someone’s time must be dedicated to helping your salesperson/salespeople optimize.   Sales management is NOT about rescuing, closing the big-deals, or doing ride-alongs.   It is about coaching, motivating, developing, keeping salespeople on task, and holding them accountable to their weekly activity and pipeline commitments.   The lack of effective sales management in private companies is staggering.   In fact, many private companies don’t even attempt to manage their salespeople.  They just equip their sales reps with some product training, then send them out to sink or swim.  Again, good luck to that.   Talk about a strategy of hope…   

3.   Adopt an effective Locate, Land, and Launch™ Process:  Effective salespeople are scarce, and the cost of hiring weak salespeople is outrageous.   Despite this fact, many business owners, unfortunately, would rather pay taxes or get their teeth pulled than go through the “painful” process of hiring, on-boarding, and developing effective salespeople.   Consequently, most owners don’t do it well.  Most simply don’t know how to do recruit, hire, and launch salespeople, others don’t devote sufficient resources to making it happen because of “other really important projects”.    If you are an owner that has more important projects to focus upon than those that will grow your revenues, market share, profitability, and enterprise value, feel free to join this group of non-performing sales organizations.

4.    It OK to say “I don’t know how…”:   If you are like many business owners, you may feel that selling directly, or building a consistent, predictable, scalable sales organization simply isn’t your strongest suit.   You are in business today because you do some things well, but none of us does everything well.   So if selling effectively, or hiring, on-boarding, developing, and growing a great sales team is not your best talent, there is a ton of help out there, ranging from training and coaching to interim sales management & leadership.

5.   The choice is yours:   Again, there is no magic here and the odds say you’ll fail if you behave like the majority.  Any business owner (whether they are proficient in building sales teams or not) can dramatically upgrade their sales organizations by virtue of single decision to commit and change.

So the “secret” of successful sales organizations is really not a secret.   Sales success may be determined solely by virtue of a choice.   You can do anything, but you can’t do everything, so I hope you’ll choose wisely.

Best wishes for the most successful 2019!

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2019.   All Rights Reserved.