Tag Archives: Sales Team

By Liz Wendling

Successful companies and smart sales managers see an economic downturn as an opportunity. A slow economy can mean decreased sales, unmotivated sales teams and deteriorating morale, but it’s also a great time to revive and motivate your sales team to become stronger players who possess the skills needed to succeed. But is the person leading your team the right person for this task?

It’s not uncommon for top-producing salespeople to be “promoted” into the position of sales manager, in the hopes that they’ll manage and lead others to be equally successful. I see it all the time; great salespeople with no experience in leadership and management being thrown into a position they’re not ready to play. But the move often fails because they are being promoted for the wrong reasons! Just because they are great sellers doesn’t mean they are great leaders!

Motivating and leading a sales team requires a completely different skill set than just delivering the Monday morning pep talk. Many sales managers lack basic coaching skills and tend to use coaching techniques – such as pep talks, high fives, a few “atta boys” and “atta girls,” and motivational messages – that are more appropriate for little league than the major league. Sure, pep talks and motivational messaging have their place, but they’re not going to produce the type of high-level results that are expected of great sales teams.

In order to maximize profits, your salespeople must be performing at their best, operating at peak performance and led by managers who possess the skills to empower a team. The result? Employees who feel valued and confident in their sales skills are more effective in the sales process, which leads to more profit and growth for your company.

To have – and to retain – a high-level sales team, a sales manager needs to learn the communication skills that keep a team focused and successful. Positive feedback is crucial to maintaining an encouraging work environment in which all salespeople can thrive. Negative feedback and nagging is not a form of motivation and not an environment that breeds success. Some inexperienced sales managers use those tactics because they lack the leadership skills necessary to manage effectively. No one is ever motivated by nagging!

Productive sales managers have the ability to identify, define and improve sales skills for all members of the sales team. They possess the proper tools to maximize the strengths of their team, and address the weaknesses, through coaching and constructive communication.

Is your sales manager a true coach, or just a salesperson with a fancy new title? Can he or she motivate and inspire or just nag and criticize? The skills required for managing, mentoring and developing a sales team are totally different from those required for selling.

A great sales manager leads by example and commands with authority, but in a way that draws respect rather than contempt. These managers keep morale high, set real, but challenging goals and then do everything necessary to assist the entire team in reaching and exceeding those goals. Your salespeople want to be recognized as individuals, shown appreciation and given opportunities to grow.

Before you promote your top salesperson into a position he or she might not be ready for, I recommend you take the time to implement a management “test drive” prior to an official promotion. Lay out the rules of the game and help the candidate understand what the role entails so you are more equipped to make an informed decision.

A management “test drive” is an effective way to see if a salesperson truly possesses what it takes to step into that role. Finally, give the candidate the skill set needed to lead, manage, motivate and inspire. If you don’t, you are throwing someone into the position who isn’t equipped with the right tools for the job, and it will cost you sales.

Liz Wendling, the sales coach for women, believes everyone is in sales. Armed with proven sales strategies that work in this tough economy, Liz helps women business owners (and smart men) create immediate sales results, achieve lasting business success and permanently raise their bottom line. She works with business owners who don’t have sales experience as well as those who have sold for years that need a tune-up to communicate more effectively and sell more efficiently.
Go to www.salescoachforwomen.com or e-mail Liz@salescoachforwomen.com.This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.

By Greta Roberts, CEO, Target Teams

Every sales executive dreams of having a stable of hunters – especially during a recession – yet how do you identify, motivate and keep them on board?

When it comes to sales reps, you could say there are two kinds of employees – hunters and farmers. Hunters live to uncover and seize new opportunities while farmers are better suited to up selling and cross selling to an existing client base.

While both are invaluable to a company, when it comes to surviving in lean times, the hunters are being hunted more than ever because of their ability to create new opportunities and see them through to profitability.

As a sales executive, you know you need to cultivate an environment that will enable the hunter to thrive, despite a challenging economic climate that presents fewer leads and has created slower sales cycles.

While experience and instinct has taught you what makes a good sales rep, it’s not always easy to identify the characteristics that differentiate the hunter from the farmer.

Based on extensive research conducted with sales professionals over close to a decade, what follows are the 12 traits Target Teams has uncovered of the sales hunter.

Along with outlining the pros and cons of each characteristic, you’ll also find helpful tips on how to manage and retain the hunter so that they are working to their full potential for their careers and your bottom line.

1. Hunters like to solve problems on their own and on the fly.

• Pro: the autonomous sales rep will close the deal with little handholding.
• Con: team collaboration can present a challenge.
• Tip: break down the responsibilities of the team to ensure the hunter is still able to own and drive part of the effort.

2. Hunters like to lead whatever projects are on their plates.

• Pro: they will successfully lead and execute sales initiatives.
• Con: they can present a challenge to the manager who is trying to lead the team.
• Tip: provide opportunities for the hunter to independently manage projects and ask them to demonstrate the results in a public forum to the manager and the executive team. This will allow the hunter to gain public recognition without usurping the role of the manager.

3. Hunters want (and need) to be around people because they thrive on the energy of others.

• Pro: they naturally gravitate toward meeting new people and initiating cold calls and are comfortable addressing a larger audience at the prospect’s site.
• Con: if this hunter works from home or is based in a small regional sales office, they will feel disconnected and are more likely to disengage.
• Tip: Find a reason to bring them into corporate headquarters several times a quarter and arrange for meetings and other interactions with colleagues and executive personnel. Also, be sure to regularly check in with them on a personal level as hunters appreciate and come to rely on their 1:1 personal connection with their manager.

4. Hunters like working on a lot of different projects at the same time.

• Pro: they can successfully manage more territories and service more clients.
• Con: they may interrupt existing processes and defined roles in their pursuit of juggling lots of activities simultaneously.
• Tip: provide a wider, well-defined territory so that the hunter can tackle lots of projects without negatively impacting other staff.

5. Hunters like change.

• Pro: they’ll easily adapt to change whether it’s ushered in by internal or external forces.
• Con: they will get bored with routine.
• Tip: include changes in the hunter’s role every 12-18 months for renewed enthusiasm.

6. Hunters have a strong sense of urgency.

• Pro: they want sales to close quickly. No prodding required from their management team.
• Con: their patience is tested when it comes to deals that may require longer sales cycles.
• Tip: consider matching the length of the sales cycle with the “sense of urgency” of the rep – i.e. small account sales rep with sales cycle of 2 weeks vs. global account sales rep with a sales cycle of a year and a half.

7. Hunters tend to bend the rules.

• Pro: hunters will creatively solve problems (and potentially bend some rules) to creatively progress with prospects –typically leading to an increase in sales.
• Con: this trait can frustrate those responsible for enforcing the company’s administrative and business processes.
• Tip: provide flexibility in the sales process — require process requirements if they are absolutely critical.

8. Hunters dislike entering sales forecast data.

• Pro: they have an innate ability to hold a great many facts in their head and this helps to support their primary focus on active selling.
• Con: lack of accurate rep forecast data can impede management’s ability to accurately forecast for the executive team and make critical business decisions.
• Tip: require only critical forecast data — potentially sales operations or administrative support to capture and document rep conversations with regard to sales status and forecasts.

9. Hunters want to be paid — and paid well — for their high performance.

• Pro: greater profitability for everybody involved.
• Con: reps are highly motivated when paid immediately. If not paid well, they will leave and chase compensation elsewhere. A reps loyalty is to results and top compensation.
• Tip: work with your finance department and CEO to create easy to understand compensation plans that are tied exclusively to performance.

10. Hunters are naturally politically savvy.

• Pro: they are superb at recognizing power players inside of an organization and winning them over in the pursuit of their career as well as closing the deal. They love the game of competition.
• Con: they will thrive with visibility with senior leaders within their own company that may not always be available.
• Tip: establish mechanisms for the hunter to connect with senior leaders in your organization so that they are recognized publicly and privately for their efforts.

11. Hunters are systematic problem solvers.

• Pro: they are curious and ask questions making them the ideal consultative sales person.
• Con: they don’t like to be told how to do something, even if they or the processes are new because they love the challenge of figuring something out on their own.
• Tip: encourage and reward questions from reps – as well as challenges from them when they seem to act as if they know everything.

12. Hunters love to learn and to teach others.

• Pro: they are highly useful to colleagues, prospects and clients in breaking down and explaining complex topics and ensuring that the team and client has the information to either succeed in their job and/or make an informed purchasing decision.
• Con: they can sometimes come off as a “know it all”
• Tip: provide an opportunity for the hunter to share their knowledge with their peers or with other departments (i.e. customer service, product development, marketing, executive team).

Certainly, there are many variables that contribute to sales hunters being successful. Yet, more often than not many of these 12 traits appear consistently in sales teams of many sizes and industries.

Businesses spend money, time and effort training, coaching, changing compensation plans, redefining territories, changing sales management — often without examining the most critical element of sales success — the sales professionals themselves.

Greta Roberts is CEO and founder of Target Teams, a recognized leader in creating solutions to help businesses align their Talent Strategy with Business Strategy.
http://blog.treeline-inc.com/blog/bid/31565/Tracking-the-Sales-Hunter

How many times have you stared into a fridge full of food and you can’t find anything to eat?  Or, how many times do you find yourself flipping through 500 HD channels to find that there is nothing on television?  Today we have access to so many options in our day to day life that it is paralyzing.  From what music we want in our ears to what kind of dairy product we want in our coffee, the decisions are endless.

If you are a hiring manager or the leader of a sales organization, you are probably experiencing the same issue in your hiring efforts.  You get into the same mindless, robotic process that delivers the same results day in and day out.   You find that you have many choices, but none are what you are looking for.  At Treeline we keep a fine tuned ear to what is happening in the market and we have been hearing a reoccurring message: “Why can’t we find any qualified sales people in a market saturated with them?”  To answer this question, let’s go back to the refrigerator for a second…

…here you stand, in front of your fridge, you’re hungry.  Your shelves are full of food and beverages, you’re overwhelmed, and yet you keep coming back every 10 minutes.  You continue with the same behavior which nets the exact same result every time.  So you chose something.  But, before you reach for the jalapeños, which you know you do not want but they are in arms reach, stop and ask yourself, “what do I really want and what is it going to take to get it?”

This is the key question which deserves a key answer.  The answer in the refrigerator case is not just “food”.  You have to identify what you want and essentially need: snack or meal, sweet or savory.  Should I have a jalapeño with that?  You get the idea.  Now apply the same questioning to the sales professional that you are seeking.

The key question needs a key answer – “What do I want?” – the answer is not “a top producing sales professional.”  That is the same as saying I am going to watch some TV for entertainment and you find yourself surfing 500 channels of nothing.  You must dig deeper and get more specific.  What is your plan?  Who do you need to hire?  Is it a junior sales person that you can mold or tenured sales professional with a book of business?  A strategic sales person with a lengthy sales cycle and a multi-million dollar quota or an activity driven sales professional with a short sales cycle and a $500k quota?  Direct industry experience or different industry experience yet selling into the same decision makers?  There are so many different species of sales professionals – it is crucial to identify what type of sales person can produce for your organization.

Just because the market has a bigger pool of sales candidates does not make it any easier to identify who is a good sales person for your company.  In fact, it makes it more difficult.  There are still the same amount of qualified candidates out there in the market but they are now much harder to find and hidden amongst the growing number of unqualified candidates that are also targeting your company’s opening.  You must be able to sustain a bandwidth that will allow you to effectively screen every resume and quickly identify the qualified from the unqualified.  The organizations that have identified resources that help them source outside of their own refrigerators are the ones that are able to effectively snatch up top talent from the market and build stronger sales teams.  They tap into less traditional resources.  They use social media and specialty boutique search firms with resources to tap into their endless network with a laser focus to find candidates that fit your criteria.  This is bad news for their competitors.  

Don’t fall victim to the paralysis of being overwhelmed by choices.  Don’t be afraid of change or to try something new.  Mix it up and build a new process and system that will force you to ask the key questions and find candidates that are outside of your norm.  If you need help, Treeline has built a system that will help you identify the right sales professionals for your organization – try it for free by clicking here. 

However you decide to build your sourcing system, if you do not ask these key questions and identify the key answers, you will find yourself staring into the fridge and eating jalapeños every time.  And every time you will be unsatisfied and find yourself right back in front of the fridge, guessing and looking at the same unsatisfying options.