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April 8, 2011
Is Your Sales Force Achieving New Business Acquisition Goals?
By: Scott Gruher
Here are a few key areas to review:
Selling Time
If your reps only spend 40-50% of your time selling, it is going to be difficult to produce World Class results. Reduce the administrative burden and allow your top hunter resources to focus on high value activities.
Role Clarity
Do your “hunter” reps spend time selling to current customers? If so, you have a blended job and because it is easier to call on current customers, your reps will naturally gravitate towards these interactions. Improve role clarity by ensuring your best hunter resources focus exclusively on hunter selling activities.
Competencies
How many times have you heard “I think ____ would be a good at sales because they are a people person”? Likeability is an important attribute of a sale professional, but it alone will not drive new business results. Competencies such as the ability to persuade, financial selling skills, resilience, and energy may be important success indicators. Implement a system to ensure you are acquiring talent that is capable of performing at a high level in a new business role.
Reporting Relationships
Do your sales leaders have the ability to properly train and develop your hunter sales professionals on how to properly sell new business? Are they in the trenches helping reps prospect and manage sales campaigns while also diagnosing development needs. Or do they sit in the office and push paper?
Expectations
Do your hunter sales professionals know exactly what is expected of them? Get granular. Reps need know what is expected of them on a yearly, quarterly, weekly, and daily basis. They should also fully understand the payoff of executing the game plan.
Most sales organizations are not executing the five steps above at a World Class level. Why not? To become best in class may require substantial reorganization and disruption. If you don’t put the correct talent and structure in place the systems will always appear to be broken. Ask the hunter sales professionals in your sales organization a series of questions related to the sections above to determine where the major gaps are and take action.
Next time we will discuss selling time and three methods for determining the current reality.
Scott joined SBI in 2010 with years of hands-on experience in sales leadership and enterprise selling. Since his arrival, he has helped dozens of organizations dramatically accelerate growth, from Fortune 10 organizations like Phillips 66 to fast-growing cloud service organizations like InfusionSoft. Scott specializes in cross-functional alignment. He helps leaders align around the growth goal and design the right processes to bring the strategy to life. His unique combination of real world experience and a pragmatic approach to problem solving have made him one of SBI’s most demanded resources.
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