The holy grail of sales management is to have an entire sales team of top performers. Whatever drives your economic engine—the commissions, the recognition, the job security, the advancement opportunities, the sweet victories over the competition—let that motivate you to take the Sales Acumen challenge.

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Benjamin Franklin said it best, " The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

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How much better would your sales results be if you had 80% of your salespeople with the productivity of your current top 20%?

The 80/20 Rule will kill sales team performance. If 80% of your salespeople are not producing excellent results, they are not making enough commissions or achieving the success of top performers—they "move on" (voluntarily or involuntarily) and you are left with a lot of  (low return) work replacing them. This doom loop will eventually take its toll on management—and eventually the company.

How do your salespeople get your message out when customers are getting information from the internet, reducing reliance on salespeople?

Buyers think they are getting the information they need about products and services from the Internet. They have access to competitive information, "expert" opinions, customer feedback and pricing information. They love to buy, and are afraid of being sold. 

The customer shops for features, but may not get any useful benefits. If the customer buys features they'll never use, did they get a good value? 

The customer shops for price, but may buy too much capacity. If the  price is lower but the customer buys more than they need, did they get a good value?

Salespeople can add value by developing solutions that exactly meet their customer's needs. Solutions that address customer issues and provide desired results would compel the customer to take action.

What are the profiles of your top performing salespeople that are succeeding in this dynamic environment, and how can you hire more salespeople with their characteristics?  

If your like most companies, you have a sales performance gap in your organization—your top (20%) performers are thriving and your bottom (80%) performers are struggling.

Peter Drucker, world renowned professor and management consultant, estimates that as many as 2/3 of hiring decisions may be mistakes. Most employee hiring decisions are made with inadequate information. To make the correct hiring decisions, you need information—more information than can be obtained from traditional interview and reference checking methods.

The cost of poor performance and employee turnover can have a devastating impact on productivity and profits.

Are your customer-facing people trained for optimal performance in this challenging business world? How can you determine the development needs of new hires and the existing sales team? What are the skill gaps that need to be closed for salespeople to be successful? How do you provide sales training in a manner that does not disrupt sales productivity?

Salespeople must add business value. It is not sufficient for them to know about your products and services, they must understand their customers' specific opportunities, issues and desired results, decision making process, and risk tolerance.

Salespeople need a business perspective with the sales, business, relationship, financial and technical skills to find out how to help their customer succeed. 

Sales pressure and fatigue can result in shortcutting the consultative sales process, a trap that can only be broken by an uplifting, developmental workshop led by a professional the sales team will respect.

How can you insure sales progress is efficient and results in maximum profitable revenue?

The role of sales management is to monitor the sales force’s activity, progress, and results; assess opportunities and problems as they arise; and redirect salespersons’ efforts efficiently. Sales managers need a catalytic mechanism that drives economic progress in a manner that produces predictable results.

Effective communication, commitment of resources, and forecast accuracy cannot be left to chance or ad hoc encounters between sales teams and their management.

What are customers looking for?

Customers are facing the same pressures you are. What they need to achieve success is a trusted advisor, an expert in their field, a business partner—a company that has been there before and successfully dealt with similar issues and opportunities. 

Going it alone or with the use of the internet only, is a sub optimal approach—time is extended, expense is greater, and outcomes are lessened. It can be a very lonely job—one where the customer assumes full accountability—and frequently suffers the consequences.

Customers need a sales partner that can use their experience to solve problems, get results and make them successful.

The Sales Acumen challenge.

For qualified companies, we will do a free assessment of your performance improvement opportunity that identifies the:

• Sales team hiring, training and managing issues that are obstructing increases to profitable sales;

• Results that can be realized by removing the hiring, training and management obstructions;

• Quantifiable returns you can expect by achieving obtainable results;

• Quantifiable investment you would have to make to get the expected return.

Pre-qualification checklist:

• Do you have an annual salesperson turnover rate greater than 15% (are you loosing any of your top performers)?

• Do you have a performance gap in your sales team with 20% or fewer of its members generating 70% or greater of the sales?

• Are you missing sales forecasts because of unexpected delays in the sales cycle?

• Based on your historical closing rate, do you lack qualified prospects to insure you beat your assigned sales targets.

• Have you lost a key customer to the competition?

• Are you experiencing pricing pressure that is eroding your margins? 

• Are your salespeople having difficulty getting appointments with decision-makers?

• Do you have 40 or more customer-facing salespeople (direct sales, telesales, telemarketing, sales support, customer and field service)?

Whether you have an internal HR and training department or not, if you answered yes to some or most of these questions, you have a high probability of being able to significantly and immediately increase profitable sales. Email or call (714) 612-1511 to discuss your situation further.

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