October 26th, 2009
These past five days, I've had relatives visiting -- and it's been great! We enjoyed lots of great food, golf and the beginning of fall in East Tennessee. My sister-in-law is very successful in sales and we spent many moments discussing her career and mine, and talking about everything from cold calling to various sales management topics. Even though she's considered a "top performer" in her industry, she's still focused on net-new business development -- one reason she's still a top performer!
She knows I enjoy cooking and has heard my keynote on creating your own personal menu, "The Passion of Impact." She felt that cold calling was her most challenging ingredient. But the more we talked, the more we realized that cold calling wasn't her biggest challenge -- it was time management. Or, more specifically, blocking out time. Because she's so busy, we explored a resource for prospecting that she has been overlooking.
Cultivating your existing clients for referrals or gaining access to targeted accounts via your current clients must be included in your sales plan. One idea I used to implement is scheduling, at a minimum, two calls a year to all my "old" clients to perform a quality-control check and see if they had other needs to service. But most importantly, I always asked, "Do you know anyone else we should be speaking with?" (After a few calls, they came to expect that question from me.) Schedule all of your clients into Outlook or whatever CRM tool you're using during the next few weeks and begin the process.
The other marketing activity we recommend is to schedule a "users conference" twice a year. These would include new product updates, client panels, industry or vendor teams, and a special speaker or program. One my clients does this and gets terrific results including not only "up-selling" existing clients, but inviting all of their existing prospects to the same event to let them be sold by their existing clients.
As sales mangers, our strategy is to focus our salespeople on closing every opportunity that is on the table. Tactically, that is correct. However, at this time of the year, sales leadership must be focused on achieving the sales quotas for the first quarter of 2010.
What are your ideas for cultivating your customers for more business? Comment below or send me an email at Ken@Acumenmgmt.com. I'll collect your contributions and list them in the next blog.
Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge
Posted in Sales Kick Off Meeting, sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management, Sales Management Consulting, Sales Management Planning, Sales Management Systems, Sales Management Training, Sales Motivation, Sales Training | Comments Off
October 19th, 2009
Adding sales value will be a critical success factor in 2010. This is true for organizations with five or fewer salespeople and certainly for those with more than 500.
With many clients, we simply work to install a three-week new-hire-on-board training program, and then build quarterly sales training programs that cover product/technical knowledge, sales skills, competition and company operations (CRM) industry awareness. These are designed to increase the professional value of the salesforce.
Sales certification takes this concept one step further. Sales certification requires a philosophical commitment from management to building a strong sales culture. It will result in more analytical sales data, less turnover, higher margins and long-term client relationships. A sales certification program requires sales team training, testing and validating that the training has been accepted and acted upon by the sales team.
This is the "inspect what you expect" approach we've written about before. We recommend to all our clients that twice a year (at minimum), each salesperson must be videotaped selling your company and your solutions and presenting a solutions recommendations or sales proposal. This not only allows sales management to access the skill levels of each salesperson, but it also builds a sales training library of the "best" sales training videos for each of the presentations.
Sales certification can also take it much further. In one situation, we hired professional actors to roleplay sales scenarios. Each salesperson had 30 minutes to read the sales scenario prior to walking into the sales situation in which the professional actors (a panel of three judges) evaluated the sales call. One note: The professional actor had a slightly different sales scenario. This forced the salesperson to react in real time -- just like a real sales call. Each sales call was videotaped and judged on a pass/fail basis. This pressure and need to perform added the edge to getting it right! We also did this in their account planning process each quarter.
The last piece of sales certification is a tie to sales compensation. As each phase of certification level is achieved -- you may have three to five levels of certification -- higher levels of compensation can be paid. We like to recommend a quarterly percentage bonus if 100 percent of QTD quota is achieved.
2010 won't be an easy year. The economy will still be fighting back, there will be worries of inflation and devaluing of the U.S. dollar, unemployment will still be high, and terrorist threats will still exist. Creating teamwork among quality salespeople will the way to ensure you sell your way out of the recession. In fact -- and this is our message for 2010 -- successful companies will have to create the policies, strategies and people to create their own opportunities and sell, sell, sell. Taking orders is a lost strategy. Sales leadership must set the discipline, accountability and control within their sales organizations to separate themselves from their competition with sales certification.
Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance.
Posted in Sales Kick Off Meeting, sales leadership, Sales Leadership Training, Sales Management Planning, Sales Training | Comments Off
