CEO Sales Guide

Creating a “Culture of Accountability” is the cornerstone of building an over-achieving sales team.  And really it’s fundamental to building over-achieving teams in general.  As a CEO, President, or Business Owner you probably understand this and chances are most of your leadership team understand this concept as well.  And yet, many sales managers (and managers in general) struggle when it comes to holding their people accountable.  Why is that?

Here are five issues and barriers we have observed through our consulting practice over the years.  There are many more we could list, but this will give you a good place to start if a lack of accountability has been a challenge in your organization.  How many of these apply to your managers? 

Unclear Goals

If your managers don’t have a clear line of sight to your company’s goals and a clear understanding of what their team needs to do to help achieve them, how can they possibly hold their team accountable to the daily activities and behaviors that will get you there?

No Coaching Rhythm

We recommend sales managers hold a regularly scheduled “formal” coaching meeting at least every two weeks (weekly is better).  This is in addition to all the “informal” coaching conversations that happen around the office or driving back from a joint sales call.  Without a regular coaching rhythm where your sales manager and each individual sales person review progress toward the goals, activities driving the goals, as well as potential barriers and challenges getting in the way, it’s very difficult to hold people accountable and keep them on track.

Too Much Complaining

There are a couple of ways to look at this issue.  In some cases, your sales manager is the whiner (“we don’t have enough resources….operations is letting us down….the competition is killing us in a price war….” and on and on).  In other cases, they are too sympathetic and tolerant of the whining and excuses they hear from their team.  When someone on their team is complaining about a challenge they have, strong managers ask questions (“What can you do to change the situation?” or “Are you telling me this because you want me to do something or are you just letting off steam so you can focus on solving it yourself?”).  Most managers join in and simply add gasoline to the fire.

Too Friendly

While it’s important that your sales managers build a strong rapport with their team and establish a high level of trust, many managers go too far and become too “buddy-buddy” with the people on their team.  Or worse, they become buddy-buddy with some members of the team but not all.  When that happens they start treating people differently and it breeds tremendous resentment across the team.  The key is to establish clear goals, review them regularly, stop accepting excuses, and manage agreements about what needs to happen each week/month to reach the goals.

Too Aloof

Some managers go too far the other way.  They don’t invest the time in getting to know each team member, what their goals are (both business and personal goals), and they really don’t know them as people.  These managers become unapproachable and come across as inauthentic when they try to be friendly.  When your managers can get to know the personal goals of each member of their team and help them see your company as the means through which they can reach that goal, it becomes much easier to hold team members accountable to the daily/weekly/monthly activities need to reach their goals (both business and personal).

All of the work your sales people are doing at the front of the sales process (identifying the right targets and making initial contact to get an appointment) is a waste of time if they blow the appointment.  What needs to happen to make every appointment count?

Here are five (5) key goals every sales person on your team should focus on when they get in front of a prospective buyer:

2) Ask Great Questions
Questions are the answer. Too many sales people show up and start talking about all the features and benefits of their product without ever asking the prospective customer what is important to them.

Instead of diving right into a demo or launching into a presentation, what would happen if your sales people asked questions that made the prospect think about their issues and challenges differently?  What would happen to your revenue if your sales people were more memorable?  Do they have the skills they need to drive this type of conversation and help a prospect discover the gap between where they are now and where they could be if they worked with your company?

 

3) Create Urgency
Will a prospect feel compelled to take action by the end of the conversation your sales people typically have during an initial appointment?  Or will they politely say "thank you" and get on with the rest of their day?  The questions your sales people ask...the areas they explore to identify issues and challeges....the way they summarize and recap what the prospect says...all of these things should drive the prospect to want to take action (whether with your company or with someone else).  A run-of-the-mill demonstration or presentation doesn't do this.

4) Ask Questions 3-deep
When your sales people are asking great questions and creating urgency, make sure they don't rush through each issue in a hurry to get to the end of the call. Slow down!

Ask follow up questions. Ask questions about when the issues identified first showed up. What impact is it having on their business? What would they do if they didn't have theses issues? How would that translate to improved revenue or greater efficiency or stronger margins or a faster product launch?  And what would that mean to their business?  Chances are your sales people rush right past these issues and move onto the next area they want to explore. What would happen to your sales pipeline and the quality of your proposals if everyone on your sales team slowed down and asked at least 3 questions for every issue they uncover?

5) Concise Summary and Next Steps
After spending enough time asking questions and exploring each area (at least 3 questions deep), your sales people need to master the skill of summarizing what they've heard into clear, crisp bullet points that get right to the heart of the matter.  At this point they should know whether or not it makes sense to discuss next steps. If the prospect doesn't have the types of problems your company can solve....or if they have these probelems but they are not urgent enough to be a high priority....stop the process and let the prospect know that while you might be able to help them eventually, right now may not be the best time to move forward. They will thank your sales person for being direct and honest. And if they had the right conversation (great questions, strong follow up questions, and a succintct summary of the situation) they will call you back when the timing is right.  

And the other side of that coin is when the prospective buyer has urgent needs and is a great fit for your prodcut or service, the clear next step will be to talk about how you deliver, what the investment requirements and terms might be, and how you might work together. In other words, a qualification discussion.

Qualifying all of the areas necessary to move an opportunity forwared in a profitable sales process will be the focus of our next article in this series.  

 

Sales Effectiveness & Improvement Analysis
How long is your sales cycle? Could it be shorter? What would your business look like if it were? Are your sales managers capable of coaching your team to set strong agreements at the beginning and end of each sales meeting they go to? 

Need answers? Ask for a free overview of our newest tool - the Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis™ - and we will follow up with you to find out if it makes sense to talk about helping your sales organization become more effective.

 

 

Are your sales managers doing everything they can to create a culture of accountability for your sales organization? If you ask them they’ll say,

“Absolutely, we hold them accountable every sales meeting.”

And your follow up questions should be “Accountable to what?!” In our experience many sales leaders struggle with true accountability because they focus on the wrong things.

Here are six (6) specific areas where your sales leaders should focus their time, energy and attention to create a culture of accountability for your sales team.

1. Raise expectations – too many sales managers we encounter have a high tolerance for mediocrity.
   Stop accepting mediocrity and raise expectations.  It starts with your sales manager, so that’s where you should focus.
   
   - Are they too quick to defend their team?
   - Do you hear sales managers making excuses on behalf of their sales people?
   - Have they set the bar too low for the sales team?
   
   Do they throw other departments under the bus, blaming marketing or operations or engineering or everyone else? Raise your expectations for your sales manager.  If you know you have a sales leader who has already established a high tolerance for accepting mediocrity perhaps it’s time to start looking for a new sales manager.
    
    
2. Be their manager, not their friend – is your sales manager to friendly with their team?
   Too many sales managers we coach want to be “one of the gang” and are a little too close to the sales people they manage. Obviously building team spirit and rapport is important, however for some sales managers it is more important to be liked by their sales people than to get the results you expect from them.
    
   It may happen gradually over time. It may be difficult to detect.
   When you see your sales manager turn a blind eye toward a weak performer it’s time to raise expectations and remind them that at the end of the day they will be judged on the numbers, not how well liked they are by their team. 
    
    
3. Take responsibility – the worst message to send to the sales team is to have sales managers who raise expectations and hold everyone accountable but fails to take responsibility for themselves.
   Do your sales managers take full responsibility for the results they produce? When they lose a deal or miss a revenue target, do they look at themselves and ask questions such as “What can we do differently next time? What can I do better?” Or do they avoid responsibility and look for someone to blame? Are they too quick to throw a team member under the bus when ultimately it was their responsibility?
    
    
4. Manage behaviors – what does your sales manager measure, results or activities? Too many sales managers are focused solely on the results rather than focusing on the behaviors that drive those results. Sales leaders who can keep their team focused on doing the right behaviors day-to-day, week-to-week will nearly always get the results.
    
   Sales leaders who don’t manage behaviors just hope they get there and cannot explain how they did it or predict whether or not they can do it again. 
    
    
5. Ask questions – are your sales managers applying the same strong questioning skills they developed when they carried a bag for a living, or are they more likely to make statements and proclamations?
   Something seems to happen when you add “manager” to a sales person’s title; suddenly they seem to forget that it’s always better to help the customer discover the answer and get to the right conclusion by asking good questions. The only difference now is the “customer” is the sales person they serve and support.
    
   When your sales leader can get a sales person to discover the right answer on their own, the sales person will remember it forever. When your sales leader simply tells them what to do, the sales person will likely ignore them (or worse).
    
    
6. Manage the Pipeline – are your sales managers closely monitoring every stage of the pipeline?
   
   - How often do they review it?
   - Is it balanced?
   - When do they jump in to focus on a sales person who is struggling or out of balance?
   - Do they use the pipeline reports to focus their coaching conversations?
    
   If sales managers are ultimately judged by the numbers they produce each month, quarter and year it is imperative that they hold the team accountable by closely managing the pipeline.

and will help support this conversation with your sales manager as well.
  
  
FREE Sales Accountability Plan!
The difference between top producing sales people and everyone else is their ability to hold themselves accountable on a consistent basis. Our simple, four-step Sales Accountability Plan will help you do just that.
 

 

Did you hit your sales forecast right on the nose last year?
Are your powers of predictive forecasting so strong that you nailed it right down to the penny? Of course not! 

I was talking   with my client Dave Baney – a very smart consultant in Chicago – and he gave me a new perspective on a belief I’ve long held. You’ve seen me discuss the importance of focusing on activities rather than results. What Dave pointed out was that in his consulting practice he only spends 10% of his time defining the annual budget and then 90% of his time defining the activities needed to drive the results.
 
 
What activities should your sales managers focus on? 
Don’t let your sales managers spend too much time this month working on getting the sales forecast "perfect" because I guarantee they won’t hit it (exactly). Instead, focus on identifying the activities required to not just hit it, but absolutely crush it! What activities should your sales managers focus on? Have them work backwards from the sales goal - whether by sales person, sales territory, product line, vertical market, or any other way you want to track a sales goal - and then have them focus on....

• Typical revenue per sale and the number of sales required to hit that revenue target...
• Propsoal win rate and the number of proposals needed to win more than the number of sales required above...
• Number of conversations and meetings required with qualified prospective customers to generate the number of proposals needed above...
• Number of phone calls, referrals, in-bound marketing leads, and other activities required to get into the number of conversations needed above....

When you go through this exercise with your sales leader and work your way back from a sales goal, what do your numbers look like? And how does the activity your sales leader is monitoring align with the numbers at each step of the sales process? Do they know the numbers at each stage? Don't worry about hitting your sales forecast, focus on the day-to-day, week-to-week activities your sales team needs to hit and you'll absolutely crush it.
 
  

 
  

Our last article discussed how sales has changed over the past few years, why selling is so much harder, and why taking a consultative sales approach is crucial to consistently winning more business.

"Does your sales team have the consultative selling skills needed to drive revenue growth and win more business and more profitable business?"

 
 
Here are five questions to consider as you help your sales leaders drive the transition from transactional sales tactics to consultative sales success. And even if your sales managers have already successfully lead this transition, continue focusing on these questions to reinforce the progress your sales team has made.
 
 

• Do your sales people ask good questions?
  Too often sales people stay in their comfort zone and avoid asking questions that lead them to an area they may not know. And sales people desperately want to avoid unfamiliar ground so they stay safe by asking easy, surface-level questions.
   
  If you have taken steps to map out your sales process and understand the most common business issues and challenges your prospective customers face (from their perspective, not your perspective), you are on the right track.
   
  Tip:
  Use your next sales meeting to brainstorm the top three most common business problems your product and service addresses, then develop question funnels that can help your prospects discover and quantify these areas for themselves.
   
   
• Do your sales people ask enough questions?
  I'm always amazed by how quickly sales people want to move on to another topic. When practicing a sales call or observing a sales rep in action, I can never understand why they are in such a rush! Just when they find something to dig into, they move right past it to the next issue.
  
  - Tell your team to really slow down, take their time, and dig deep.
  - Ask follow up questions.
  - Ask questions about the problem.
  - Ask questions around the problem.
    1. How long has it been an issue?
    2. When did you first notice this?
    3. What impact has that had on
        (your operations, your budget, your team, your market position, new product development, recruitment, etc.)?
    4. What have you done about it so far?
    5. How did that work?
    6. How much did that cost?
    7. What do you think you'll do next?
    8. What happens if this isn't fixed?
    9. What does that mean for you?
  
  And on, and on, and on. You can always ask more questions, and the more questions you ask that help the prospect consider their business challenges from a different perspective, the more valuable your conversations will be and they will want you to stick around.
   
   
• Are your sales people creating urgency for the prospect to take action?
  Asking good questions and asking lots of questions will only take your sales people so far - are the questions they are asking creating urgency for the prospect to act? Are they helping the prospect discover their problems, think about them differently, quantify the impact, and want to do something about it (whether or not that means doing something with you).
  When your sales team starts asking questions that create urgency, the opportunities in your sales pipeline will begin to move more quickly and the deals they close should be at higher margins.
   
   
• Are your sales people effective listeners?
  It is nearly impossible to keep a consultative sales conversation on track without being a really good listener. Your sales people need to decide to listen, block everything else out, focus in on the most important issues the prospect shares, and ask follow up questions with ease. When your team can let go of the need to control the conversation and just listen, respond, and ask a follow up question, you'll know they're track to becoming consultative sales professionals.
   
   
• Do your sales people quickly develop relationships?
  How well do they know their prospective customers? Can they quickly build trust and is it genuine? Without a foundation of trust a great relationship, it is nearly impossible to dig into all of the issues they need to explore and ask all the tough questions they need to ask.
   
  The sales person who builds rapport quickly, asks great questions that makes the prospect think about their business differently, and adds value by summarizing the challenges and offering new ideas or approaches will quickly develop relationships and will be able to ask enough questions.
  

 
Consultative selling
In this economic environment it's crucial to master the art of consultative selling. Challenge your sales managers to focus on these five questions with their sales teams and hold them accountable to follow through and reinforce these concepts. The sooner you establish that you will no longer tolerate mediocre margins and transactional selling, the faster you will see your revenue picture improve. 
 
 
Free Download
The difference between top producing sales people and everyone else is their ability to focus their time, energy, and sales efforts on their best prospect and client opportunities on a consistent basis. Our simple Sales Focus Worksheet will help you do just that. 
 
 
 
 
 

An article in today's Wall Street Journal caught my eye, "Science Reveals Why We Brag So Much."  It talks about a Harvard University study that finds:

"Talking about ourselves...triggers the same sensation of pleasure in the brain as food or money..." It goes on to say "In several tests, (the neuroscientists) offered volunteers money if they chose to answer questions about other people...rather than themselves...Despite the financial incentive...(volunteers) willingly gave up between 17% and 25% of their potential earnings."

Ask a sales manager who has been on a joint sales call recently and they'll tell you the test subjects got off easy.  When sales people talk about themselves instead of engaging the prospective customer in tough, timely questions they almost certainly give up more than 17% to 25% of their potential earnings!

This is one of the most common issues we run into when we work with a sales team.  Instead of asking good, tough, timely questions....questions that help the prospect think about their situation in a new way....questions that challenge the way a prospect is doing things currently....questions that reframe the issue and create urgency....questions that highlight the consequences of NOT acting to fix a problem....questions that help your sales person earn respect and credibility....questions that uncover compelling reasons for the prospect to move forward and more importantly to move forward with your company.  Instead of doing all of that, what do most sales people do?  What do your sales people do?

If they're like many of the sales people we meet when we first get started, they probably do exactly what the test volunteers in the Harvard Study did.  They talk about themselves.  They talk about their product.  They talk about the features and benefits of their service.  In short, they puke all over themselves and stick to what they know rather than engaging the prospect in a real conversation by asking great questions.

What would happen to your revenue growth if your sales people learned a different lesson from this Harvard Study?  What if they learned how to ask good, tough, timely questions that got your prospects talking about their problems and challenges?  About their strategies and plans?  About their company and their job?

This study cuts both ways. When your sales team learns to get out of their own way and ask questions that get your prospective customers talking, you'll have more awards to hand out and bigger bonus checks to sign at the end of the year.  How many of your sales people are capable of making that transition?  Do you have a sales team or just a group of professional braggarts?  How does your sales team measure up?

What would your revenue look like if your sales team had one extra day to sell every year?  This year we get a bonus "leap day" and every person on your team will make a series of decisions about how they invest their time.  Those decisions will have an impact on the results they produce - not just on leap day, but every day!  Let me share a sales secret that can create an "extra day" of selling every single year, not just every four years during leap year.

First, let's spend a moment talking about sales measurables.  What do you measure?  How do you measure success for your sales team? If you're like most CEOs we work with, you probably have a very solid understanding of your proposal conversion rate.  You know that if you send out X number of proposals every month you will win $Y in new business.  A few CEOs understand how many productive sales meetings need to take place to generate X number of proposals.  And it is a very rare CEO (or business owner, or VP of Sales) who understands the daily activities required by every sales person, in every territory, to drive the right number of meetings (and frankly the right type of meetings), to drive the highly qualified proposals that lead to reaching or exceeding your monthly, quarterly, and annual revenue goals.  If you have this down, great!  If you don't, contact me and I'll quickly help you figure it out.

Whether or not you understand the daily activities required by each sales person on your team to drive the revenue results you want, here's a sales secret you can implement right away to add an extra day of selling every year.  Have everyone on your sales team form the habit of making one extra call before they go home every day.  That's it.  One small change - a simple decision they can make every day - that will drive massive results over time.

• One extra call every day.
• Five working days per week.
• 50 weeks per year (assumes two weeks of vacation).
• 250 extra calls per year.

How many days do your sales people make 250 phone calls?  For most sales people (unless they work in a call center or highly transactional environment), 250 phone calls would be an outstanding day.  Even if they only made an extra 200 phone calls per year, that would still be a great day of sales activity.  Once you understand your sales measurables, you can easily calculate the impact an extra 200 calls from every person in your sales organization could have on your revenue.  Hold your sales team accountable to this one simple decision - every day - and your sales will take a leap every year, year after year. 

What would happen to your revenue growth this year if your sales team formed this habit?  What can you do to make sure that happens, starting today?

Here's another excellent Ted Talk with an important lesson for your sales team.  In this 18-minute presentation, Nancy Duarte highlights "The Secret Structure of Great Talks."  And while her focus is more on presentations and speeches - she uses her structure to map and highlight Steve Jobs' 2007 launch presentation for the iPhone as well as Dr. Martin Luther King's famous speech, "I Have a Dream."  If you listen carefully there are several key points that apply to sales conversations:

• Creating awareness of the gap between "the way it is right now" and "the way it could be" will pull the audience toward you and create more urgency to take action. 
• Establishing a rhythm by traversing between various aspects of "the way it is now" and "the way it could be" creates a more compelling and interesting conversation, building momentum until you end with a new vision for the future.
• Harnessing the natural resistence we encounter as we ask people to change by tacking back and forth from "what is" to "what could be" and using that natural resistance to actually draw them closer to our vision and idea.
• The difference between an audience (or a prospect) choosing a mediocre idea (or product/service) over a more clever idea (or product/service) is often simply a matter of how you communicate that idea.
• Using archetypical examples, personal stories, appropriate emotional examples, and familiar analogies makes it easier for the audience to engage and understand your vision.

As you think about the type of conversations your sales team has, how often do they start by spending some time on "the way things are now" and end with a vision for "the way it could be if you used our product/service?"  Do they spend enough time asking questions about "the way it is now" and helping the prospect discover the problems and consequences of sticking with the status quo?  How effective are your sales people at creating as wide a gap as possible between what is and what could be?  What would happen to your sales results and business growth if everyone on your sales team mastered this approach? 

Please enjoy a great presentation from Nancy Duarte on "The Secret Structure of Great Talks."

If you would like talking points and a meeting outline with ideas about how to use this at an upcoming sales meeting, please let me know.