September 4, 2009 by dave.

If you’re trying to challenge your company to achieve greater business results, then you need all the help you can get.  For example, you may be trying to open a new market, introduce a new technology, turn around a struggling team, or successfully merge two organizations.  For these, you need all the help you can get.  And the help you will need is not just technical help, or financial help or legal help.  You’ll need help with relationships and systems as well.  You will need help establishing trust, building a positive culture, managing disagreements, and negotiating win-win solutions to problems, just to name a few.  And perhaps most importantly, you’ll need help setting up systems and processes that reinforce the culture you are trying to create.

If you’ve never had a good human resources manager to help you build your sales & marketing team, you have missed something special.  It is surprisingly easy to let emotions cloud your objectivity and inhibit your ability to see what is obvious to a third party.  The value of having a coach who is a little removed from the day-to-day frustrations, and yet is expert in understanding human relationships in the workplace just can’t be overstated.  Yet many executives struggle on alone.

I had such excellent HR help in my first sales management position that I took it for granted that everyone had these kinds of resources.  I was working for a large pharmaceutical firm then, but I found later that most companies can’t afford strong HR or training departments.  Even in large companies, Sales and HR management can drift apart.  And I learned that many CEOs have never seen HR working well; so they don’t understand the value and wait until serious problems evolve before bringing in help.

My HR colleagues tell me that they see salespeople and sales managers get in trouble in a couple of predictable ways:

• Salespeople tend to get in trouble for discipline reasons: not enough calls, lack of reporting, and yes, not enough sales.
• And sales managers get in trouble when too many of their people lose the edge, or don’t have it to begin with, either because management skills are weak or because hiring and training skills need help.

These observations suggest that every company needs something more than a set of evaluation forms and a set of unwritten rules about how managers can get results.  We can see that the work of HR managers and the work of sales managers need to come together into one focused program.  What my company and your company needs is a carefully constructed performance management process.

It all starts with the work: asking ourselves what results we want and what tasks are required in our specific situation to get those results in a predictable way.  We ask what steps a prospective customer will go through as they decide to purchase a product.  The answers define the sales process.  And we identify the points where a salesperson must be engaged in that process, and what skills are required at those points.  You might say that we develop a sales strategy.

Once we are clear about the sales tasks, we can identify the skills, knowledge and abilities needed and begin to develop a job description, hiring profile and interview guides.  We want to hire not just experienced sales people, but people who have been successful using the kinds of tactics that are required in our specific situation.  Some companies need sales people who are good at cold-calling, others need people who are diligent with lead follow up, and others need those who can hunt down  the one big deal that makes the year.  Understanding these sales tasks can also be used to develop performance evaluation documents that really help managers and employees communicate about the work in progress and the skill areas where coaching is needed.

One of the most powerful tools in the management kit is the bonus plan.  And yet this tool often gets so little attention that it becomes more a source of irritation than motivation.  It can be tricky to figure out how to structure a compensation plan so that it reinforces your objectives, doesn’t break the bank and still is reasonably fair, so this is an area where professional help and deep experience is extremely valuable.

We think the interaction between sales managers and human resource managers is so important that we’ve created a new training program called “Sales + HR Management Accelerate Results” (click for more info) to help executives who are trying to improve the effectiveness of their teams.  We urge you to take a critical look at your HR systems and your sales process, especially if you have had only a little support in this area.  And if you find you need help to make improvements, we’d love to help.

expectantly,
Dave

Technical Sales Consultants, LLC
www.techsalesconsultants.com

Posted in performance, HR, human resources, sales incentives, advice, management, process, sales process, sales | Print | 1 Comment »

January 20, 2009 by dave.

Everyone seems to be fascinated by the economy and how to manage a business when all the predictions seem dismal. Depending on your industry this may be a time when you find yourself really scrambling to keep up, or you could find yourself with time on your hands as things just slow down.

It’s important to spend your time doing productive things and not just in frantic activity. Sometimes the best outcome of tough times is that you are primed and ready when things start to turn around. Two areas worth your investment are process improvement and skills improvement. Both will pay dividend in the near- and long-term.

Remember that when funding is tight, your lead generation vehicles will generate fewer productive leads, because fewer people have the funding and permissions they need. Given that situation, this is a good time to look at your lead management process and ask how you can improve it. How can you filter out the curious and focus on the funded? Could you provide a downloadable presentation or white paper for the curious and ask them to self-qualify?

Another good use of your time is skills improvement or “sharpening the saw”, as Stephen Covey would say. Invest some time in training to sharpen your team’s questioning and listening skills. Those skills will help you to understand the predicaments that your customers are in and give them both good advice and good solutions. Improving the skills of your sales team to generate more business is a lot less costly than expanding the team.

If you don’t have an internal training team, then hire a trainer for a sales process or sales skills workshop.  I’d love to help you with it or to recommend others.  And if you can’t afford a trainer then, at least buy everyone a book and go through it together. There are some sales book suggestions at this link. Be sure to offer it in both paper and audio formats; look for video as well. Hold regular discussion sessions and apply the lessons to your business. Ask someone to formulate discussion questions from the book. Assign someone else to prepare presentation slides with graphic illustrations. Ask people to try out the new ideas and report back. Create a game or a contest.  Different people learn differently, so try to engage all the senses.

Tough times come to everyone sooner or later. When they do come, invest the time wisely to keep your team motivated and to learn the lessons that will help you be at the head of the pack when recovery begins.

Good Selling,

Dave

Technical Sales Consultants, LLC
www.techsalesconsultants.com

Posted in technical sales, sales training, sales incentives, process, toughtimes, listening, management, sales | Print | 1 Comment »