The Sales Manager Performance Cycle

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I first worked with the client in 2011, when it was a startup with only a handful of salespeople. They took the step to expand and improve their operation during 2013 and 2014, and I got the call from them last week.

“Help us please Paul, we are struggling to keep up the momentum, our revenue is dropping and our incoming calls are down, can you come and help us make calls to our existing customer base to increase our revenue and help the guys hit ? his objectives? “

“Of course I can, let me come in later this week and we’ll talk about it.”

After an hour or so of talking and chatting all over it, it became very clear to me that providing some training, so that salespeople could phone orphaned customers, in order to generate some new business, was clearly not going to work. The initial reason was that they would find the refusal to make these semi-cold calls unbearable, and as soon as the phone rang again, they would stop being proactive again.

“How are you measuring them?” I asked. “They each have income targets of £ 7,000 a month,” he replied. “Well, what are your KPIs (key performance indicators)?” I continued. “That’s it – £ 7,000 a month and we show it on a Z chart right here on the wall.”

Clearly, they were being targeted and pushed to the bottom line: revenue per month. It was on the wall and you could clearly see who was doing well and who was struggling.

I continued with my questions. “What do you talk about in your sales meetings?” “We have them every Monday and we talk about their goals, their performance and what they are going to do to improve. We walk around the room and ask each salesperson what they are going to do to reach the goal that week.”

By the way, this is a classic sales management mistake. Focusing only on the final goals and numbers does nothing to help the salesperson perform better. It just increases the pressure, but many sales managers only measure this way and harass their people to perform.

I continued. “How else do you manage your team?” “It is difficult to do much more because we do not have time, so we want you to give some training.”

And at that moment it became very clear to me what had evolved. My client had grown her business organically over the past few years, had recruited a few new salespeople, and now had a team of around 10 salespeople. However, my client, who was the CEO, continued to sell to the higher net worth clients they had been dealing with for years, so I had little time to do anything other than chase them when they were not hitting targets.

Do you recognize this? Have you seen everything before?

In a busy market, when your marketing machine generates a lot of new leads and the phone keeps ringing, you can get away with it. But when things turn against you, for example a quiet period, marketing fails to attract leads, competition is raining on its parade, or a recession … you really need to beef up your performance sales management regimen. My client had not taken any of the actions recommended above. They had an effective, albeit seasonal, marketing engine. They had a booming market with an economy growing at a 3% increase in GDP year over year. They had little noticeable competition. His problem was expansion. They wanted to grow their business, they had hired new salespeople and rented a new office space with shiny new equipment and software.

They had grown and matured, and I realized that they needed effective performance sales management. Let me explain what it takes to help you reach your goals and stay in business, because right now you are losing money.

The performance cycle

Let’s take a look at each area of ​​the cycle and examine what the sales manager must do to complete the full cycle. That is the first point to highlight. This growing business needs a sales manager, someone who can give it the guidance and determination to get it done. Managing a team of 12 salespeople could easily keep a full-time person busy. And they need to be managed; my client had neglected this because they were so busy.

Strategy and objectives

Develop your purpose, values, culture, and overall business objective. The value proposition enters here once you are clear about what it is about, your market and the offer you bring to the market.

Decide your route to market, how you can continue to attract new customers, sell to these customers, and maintain a relationship with the same customers, so they come back to you when they need you again.

Design how and what this process looks like. We call this the sales process, it is vital to have one and you decide how detailed it is. Be careful not to fall into the trap of letting your salespeople freely roll through sales activities. Naturally, they must bring their personality, skills, and enthusiasm to the sale, but they must follow the pattern or process that you establish.

Then come your KPIs. Naturally, you will have sales revenue targets, of course you will. These are known in the trade as products, lagging indicators, or simply numbers. Have these, but pay more attention to other KPIs that will drive performance. Take a look at your sales process and decide what activities need to be done to be successful and meet your goals. Prospecting calls, first meetings, written proposals, etc. You can do these KPIs and focus on the quantity of them if you want, but better yet, consider how you can measure the quality of them.

For example, appointments to make calls. You can have a KPI of 10 per week if you want. I would also like the quality to be measured, that is, for every 3 calls, 1 appointment is made. This 3: 1 ratio becomes a KPI in its own right.

These are known as activities and lead indicators. What gets measured gets done, as the phrase says. Strive to focus less on goals and revenue figures, and focus more on the myriad of activity KPIs that will bring success. As long as the activities are carried out with the necessary skills, the numbers will fall to the other extreme.

It’s a brave decision to focus on these and not the sales numbers, but if you do, you’ll be well on your way to cycle performance success.

Communicate your goals and plans

Whenever clients ask me to help with the reengineering of sales processes and KPIs, I always start with the concept of “ownership.” The people who want to buy all of this are members of your sales team, so ask them to create the sales process and determine the various KPIs they need to be successful. The concept and the process are simple and very effective.

Communicate the objectives annually, quarterly and monthly. Acquire acceptance of the goals and refine this by creating a motivating environment for them to operate. Motivation is intrinsic, it comes from within. For salespeople, it’s about recognition, the opportunity to fulfill their potential, challenging and exciting work, and constant development. It is not about reward. The reward will stimulate them, but they expect this, and more will not necessarily provide a motivating environment for them to excel.

The rewards are grouped with other “hygiene” factors, such as working conditions, management style, and relationships with others. You need to get it right first before you can really motivate your team to perform.

I will mention the training here. If any of the performance goals are not going to be met due to a lack of skills or knowledge, let the salespeople know that you have organized a year-round training program to help them achieve these goals. This is highly motivating, it will allow you to ensure success and the cost of the training can be offset by the income you will earn when the objectives and goals are met.

Measure and monitor

My client had a giant whiteboard on the wall that measured sales results, day by day, and also a moving annual total as a Z-chart. Of course, this is very enlightening, satisfying for the manager, and quite stressful for salespeople who they saw this only as a way to boost their performance.

Your CRM system will form the basis of any measurement, so incorporate your activity-based KPIs and measure them. Be on the lookout for KPIs and share them with your salespeople. Post them on a whiteboard, if you like, or on your “board” contained in your CRM system. These are pointers and will not tell you the whole story. Remember I mentioned that if your salespeople do these KPIs and bring in the required level of skill, then they will hit their numbers. It is the required level of skill that you want to monitor. And that’s where coaching comes in.

Field visits are the response where you observe, provide feedback, and advise. Observe them in relation to the sales process and create some kind of observation aid that you can also use in training new recruits.

Collect forecasts from your salespeople to help measure and build milestone objectives that measure revenue or goals in a shorter period of time.

Conduct regular personal interviews with your salespeople to find out how they are doing and to identify any issues or problems that you can help with. Include comments on your KPIs and other activities that you are measuring.

Performance review

The previous activity was fundamentally of observation and follow-up; now we want to review the performance. It is very easy to say that they are not achieving the goal, but this is simply focused on the result that it is too late, which is why we call it a lag indicator. The performance against activities should be reviewed here, as well as the KPIs that determine the quantity or quantity and the quality of the KPIs.

Corrective action

Naturally, if the performance is good or exceptional, I would not correct it, but I would applaud it. Remember that sellers thrive on recognition, so be sure to offer it. I’m going to go against the grain and say that this eulogy should also be done in private, not in public; it’s too embarrassing for the salesperson involved and kills everyone else. So, make it private.

It is also in private that you should provide feedback on negative performance, which is why we have performance review meetings at least once a month.

Decide together what you can both do to improve performance, here is a list to remind you:

• Training in all its forms: monitoring, job rotation, workshops, reading, videos and podcasts.

• Training

• Tutorships

• Advice if the reason for the drop in performance is Inside Play

• FISH to find out the cause of the performance drop.

• WRITE if they don’t see it themselves. Especially if the problem is attitude, not skill.

• Inject something new into the motivational environment you provide.

• Bring someone else

My final ingredient is the sales meeting. I have not mentioned it before because most of them are poorly managed. A true sales meeting should be about helping the team hit their numbers. The role of the sales manager, his main reason for being, is to achieve the commercial objectives of the business through the team at his disposal. Therefore, the sales meeting should have activities that include training, coaching, role playing, brainstorming, and sharing of best practices. It is not a place to check sales results and ask them what they are going to do to improve.

That is simply counterproductive and demotivating.

Summary

This is my model of what a successful sales manager should do. My client needs to do all of these things and they will see their business results improve and become consistent. In this way, you can safely improve your operation as you now appreciate the value and true role of the sales manager.