As the business year gathers momentum, sales strategies and plans start to make sense – or do they? Most sales managers start January full of goals and great ideas for the New Year. Then the pace of the year picks up and goals fall by the wayside.
To make 2010 a great year for you, your sales team and your company, keep these fundamentals in mind.
Focus
In an effort to survive through 2008 and 2009, many organisations forgot to stick to the knitting and began using the scatter gun approach to sales. Rather than aid survival, however, this dilutes attention and energy.
Sales teams were also “rationalised” in many organisations; customers weren’t buying so sales representatives did not offer much in the way of return on investment. Fast forward to 2010 and to make the numbers with fewer salespeople every minute of their time has to be spent with the best opportunities i.e. those with the best revenue/profit potential and those most likely to close.
“Zero in on the best targets” sounds like a common sense mantra. However many organisations are unsure of who that actually is! In 2010, focus on what you do best. What are the right opportunities? Which prospects fit the profile of your ideal client? Focus on these, and forget the rest.
Today's economy is not about growth; it's about profitability and sustainability.
Organise
Appointments are meant to help you stay organised and motivated. Unfortunately, it remains all too easy to backslide on time management. Most of us know what we should be doing to manage our time but we make every excuse no to.
Make sure your salespeople build in reminders to ask, "Is this the best use of my time?"
Change
Take a look at the systems, processes, and tools you use to manage sales. Are they the right ones? Do you need to update any of them? Are they actually helping your salespeople to close business or do they put an unnecessary administrative burden on them?
When the objective shifts from growth and capturing as many customers as possible to identifying, winning, and retaining key customers, you need to change your sales process. So where do you make the changes? That depends on what works with your key customers. Maybe you need more touch points with them or touch points at different places in the sales process than where you had them previously. Or perhaps you need to change certain automated touch points, such as changing an email sent out at a certain point to a phone call.
Whatever the solution, the key is to change your process to fit your change in strategy.
Plan
Your sales representatives should be planning on four levels – territory, account, opportunity, and call/meeting. If they aren't spending a couple hours a week planning in these areas, they're probably winging it. The traditional Friday afternoon clean up works. This is when your sales team can take care of the things that are hanging over their heads and, most importantly, plan for the next week, including setting a customer appointment for first thing Monday morning to jumpstart the week.
Remember the mantra “Fail to plan, plan to fail.”
Develop
When you change your sales process, you'll need to follow it with training on the new process and the skill sets that the new process demands. For instance, if you have shifted from holding a lot of one-on-one meetings to hosting group meetings to which your salespeople invite certain types of prospects and share research or analysis or other relevant information, you may need to implement presentation skill training. Or if you're putting more emphasis on boosting the amount of business that comes from your key customers, you may need to train salespeople on key account management.
Remember to align your training to your key objectives.
Learn
What skills would make you a better manager? And how can you help your sales team become better sellers? Evaluate everyone's skill sets and figure out how you and your team can improve over the next 12 months. Should you take a public-speaking course? Or perhaps your coaching skills could be improved?
Create a culture of continual improvement through reading, attendance of Webinars and summits and interaction with peers and colleagues.
Lead
It has been a tough few years and leadership is critical to re-gaining trust and fostering motivation in your sales team. Do the things you want your salespeople to do. Read the books you want them to read. Use the tools you want them to use. Prepare the way you want them to prepare. If you want your reps to ask better questions and do more planning and research before meetings, start doing those things yourself.
Your sales team produces at the limit of your ability to lead and manage them.
