News and Articles

“And the little boy cried: ‘He has nothing on!’ but the Emperor continued with his head held high.”  Could you be as deluded about your salespeople as the Emperor was about his new clothes?

Ask yourself the following questions.  When did you last see your salespeople sell?  Do you know who is good or in the wrong job?  Is your sales methodology empowering your people?  Are your managers managing the salespeople or just managing the numbers? 

When we at Accredit started running assessment programmes, we thought that we were building on the work carried out by sales managers – watching salespeople carry out their job, assessing their strengths and weaknesses and using this knowledge to coach their people.  How naïve we were.

At the start of a programme, people tell us, “I know how my good salespeople are”, and “John regularly hits his number, his clients like him.”  When we run the assessment, John does badly and out come the excuses.  “The assessment was unrealistic; my customers do not behave like that”.  Or: “Normally I do it differently – I did it this way because that was what I thought you wanted me to do.”  And: “I have been so busy, I didn’t have time to prepare.”

The sale manager calls us and says: “Why did John do badly?  There must be something wrong.”  So why does this happen?

From a salesperson’s perspective:

All assessments are based on real customers.  What usually happens is that we have exposed the salesperson’s limited contact strategy – they have only dealt with one role (usually a ‘technical’ role) and when we introduce businesspeople into the sales simulation, the salesperson does not know what to do.  This is obviously a major issue for companies that have a strategy of engaging at a senior level.

Anyone who says that they behaved in a different way in this assessment, unless they were deliberately trying to fail, is just kidding themselves and their boss.  It is very difficult to behave in an unnatural manner.  If someone fails to ask questions and listen to the answers in an assessment, it is because they normally ‘pitch’ at their customer, fail to ask them what they want, and do not listen.

If you cannot prepare for a ‘test’, it is highly unlikely that you prepare for a client meeting.  Those who ‘wing-it’ in an assessment are the same people who proudly tell their colleagues they wing-it in real life.  They are the same people who invariably fail to spot the big opportunity.

From the manager’s perspective:

The sales manager bases their view on the amount of revenue the salesperson brings in – which is fine, but do they know if the salesperson is selling or the client is just ordering?

The sales manager has never accompanied the salesperson on a call – so they have no idea if they are maximising sales from the account.  The sales manager thinks: “John always does his number so I will leave him alone.”

So what are we uncovering?

At least 15% of the salespeople we meet are not salespeople – they are ‘relationship managers’.  (Is this consultant speak for order takers?)  The question is, are you paying them too much and could you use an alternative sales channel?  About 20% of the salespeople just get it.  But the remaining 65% need help from their managers to keep them focused and doing the right thing.

What about the sales managers?  At the risk of being controversial, about 75% of sales managers are not sales managers.  We regularly hear salespeople say: “This is the first time anyone has looked at how I sell and given me coaching.”  Or: “The only time my manager joins me at a meeting is to be there when we sign the deal or to sort out a problem.”  And: “I really want help, but my manager is not interested in helping me.”

Assessment definitely helps you identify strengths and weaknesses in the sales team, but it should not be a one-off.  Sales managers need to attend client meetings or listen to calls regularly and to coach their people.  They need to have a consistent assessment model that is objective.

Is your sales methodology empowering your people?

We are regularly asked: “Do you support this sales methodology or that sales methodology?” and our answer is always the same – use whatever methodology you want, but don’t overcomplicate it.

We have a very simplistic view of selling.  It’s a process of asking questions to uncover need, linking the need to what you have to offer, explaining how this addresses the need, showing how you are better than the alternatives, agreeing what needs to be done to convert interest into buying, and getting the order.

Sales process is absolutely vital.  Ensuring consistency of approach will increase success, and also help standardise the qualification process to focus on winning business.  But what really happens?

We do not see enough ‘basics’ of selling taking place, very few questions to uncover needs and even fewer answers to problems.

When, during coaching, we ask people about ‘sales methodologies’, it is immediately translated into a discussion about forms to be filled in and CRM systems to be accessed.

This highlights a complete disconnect between the information being asked for and behaviour during the sales cycle.

Too often the methodology is compartmentalised into ‘opportunity management’, ‘account planning’ and ‘a customer database’ – rather than a holistic approach to selling and account development.

So what use is a sales methodology?  Regardless of its specifics, a methodology is obviously only of use if it is used.  But we rarely see a sales methodology being effectively used.  Instead, we see a methodology being imposed, and then only toyed with by the salespeople.  Even worse, we see salespeople who think that the methodology means they do not need to do the basics, as if the methodology magically allows the customers to identify why they should buy from us.

Sales methodologies have become tainted with creating complex sales solutions regardless of the complexity of the customer’s problems.  In fact, one CEO has equated solution selling with creating unprofitable solutions, with the result that he has suggested his sales team go back to ‘selling from a catalogue’.

As salespeople we all need to rescue sales methodologies from the computer systems.  CRM and salesforce automation have been used to drive processes that are increasingly removed from the needs of the customer.  Solution selling delivers solutions to customer needs and wants, opportunity management programmes improve forecasting and win-rates, and standardised account plans ensure we have a good relationship strategy.  It is not the computer systems that ensure we are successful, but the management – specifically sales management – that ensures that salespeople see the relevance of these methodologies and use them to create an effective sales organisation.

Sales managers should not only be coaching their teams in selling, therefore, but also tutoring them in the effective use of your chosen sales methodology.

Are your managers managing the salespeople or just the numbers?

Our experiences have revealed that the one area to invest in is sales management.  Time and again we are confronted with salespeople who have never been coached, have a sales manager who see themselves as some sort of ‘expert salesperson to the rescue’ and whose view of process is completely moulded by their manager.

In our opinion, this is because not enough sales managers see themselves as managers of sales teams (ie people managers), but instead see their role as the top salesperson in a pyramid of salespeople.  Many of them have not made the transition from the highly competitive, self-centred salesperson to the collaborative, supportive sales manager and team leader.

Typically their sole management ‘dashboard’ is the forecast, and in many cases they ‘manage’ the forecast to ensure an easy life for themselves.  When we discuss with sales managers the basic metrics around activities, product mix, coaching activities etc, we always get the same answer: “I don’t have time to do all of this, I am under constant pressure to update the forecast and my manager does not want any bad news.”

We have to break out of this cycle.  We are regularly seeing sales organisations that have given an overly rosy picture of the future, and in some cases the quality of business won.  This can be seen in the number of writedowns on contracts and revised outlooks.  Some can be clearly linked to the state of the economy and some with issues with delivery, but we have to be brave and take some of the responsibility for this ourselves.

So what do we want you to do?

In our pursuit of the big sale we have ignored the fundamentals of our role – selling something that solves the customer’s issues while delivering a return to our business.  As Stephen Covey would say: “Win-win or no deal.”  Sales management has a responsibility to ensure that this is what we do.  While the salespeople are the troops, sales managers are the sergeants implementing the strategy and validating that the implementation is delivering the desired results.

So let’s learn the lesson of the Emperor – don’t take someone else’s word for it, check for yourself that your people are doing the right things.  Take control, manage, lead and coach your team to success.  Keep it simple:

Ø       Make the sales process clear and then use it consistently.

Ø       Check that your salespeople are doing the basics – asking questions, listening and uncovering needs.

Ø       Coach your people – regularly.  They need it and deserve it.

Ø       Require your sales managers to behave as managers and as leaders.

We would like to see healthy debate among the sales community, and then drive towards our ideal of a professional sales community that is constantly self-accrediting, with sales directors becoming CEOs and, in turn, driving their business forward to greater success.