Last decade, all of us Inside Sales leaders pretty much had the same hiring profile:
College degree
2 years sales experience
Played a competitive sport
Then we’d do a few more interview questions and pick the candidate we felt was the best fit.
Ahhh…how times have changed. So, how do you hire the best sales reps today? The secret is to look for competencies and behaviors, not skills and experience.
Look For Competencies And Behaviors
Instead of looking for and hiring people who fit a generic profile, look for competencies and behaviors. To do this, Do take company culture into account. Are you “win at all costs” or “we want the whole team to cross the line together” kind of place? List it. Here are some of my top attributes:
Curious
I want a rep who will do some research and actively seek out learning for herself and her clients. Try questions about something they’re passionate about or the last thing they researched and why.
Proactive
Unless you’re hiring for inbound, your future superstar needs to be able to jump in picking up the phone and taking action. I want driven, leaning-in initiative takers. Try questions about how the experienced projects at school. Were they were in charge of the team? If they weren’t in charge, do they recall cringing because they had to sit on their hands and wait for others to act?
Coachable
We are going to teach and then coach this rep how to sell our products to our customers, and any level of a chip on a shoulder about being molded from the get-go is going to make everyone’s life difficult. I also find in life as well as work that defensiveness is the antidote to growth.
To test this, I do a mock call (I can also test sales instincts and natural behaviors), then I give him coaching on the call and ask him to do it again immediately. More than half your candidates will tank here, either because they start to defend their performance or mistakes or because they can’t internalize and then apply the coaching.
Capacity to learn
Reps today have 10x more information and tools to master on the job than a decade ago, and a shorter time to do it. You need people who have the capacity and desire to come in and learn quickly.
A final note
If you’re hiring for competence and attributes rather than experience and skills, make damn sure your onboarding program is teaching this. Go look for specific phone sales skills, detailed product case studies, some business and customer acumen. With a solid program, your hiring pool can stretch further than your competition’s pool…and that will make all the difference this decade.
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Welcome friends to a new decade! One we so humbly term, The Decade of Sales
Funny that this calendar turn has happened a bit under the radar. I mean, remember the turn from 1999 to 2000 and the point where we all realized that it was actually no big deal? Living near the west coast made it even funnier for me. I mean why would my world explode when clearly the east coast and central time zones survived just fine.
And although no one is labeling this new decade as one to fear or really any big deal, I think that it is. In fact, if you’re a sales leader this is an even bigger deal than Y2K. Why? Because this is OUR decade.
A quick review of the last decade.
In the past ten years, most of the major advancements we’ve seen in sales have come from our customers, from marketing, and from technology. Think about it:
The customer journey. We’ve heard this ad-nauseum by now but it was big and it was real. Customers don’t need salespeople for the first 70+ percent of their buying journey. It’s made our inbound calls more critical and put more pressure on our sales reps and our product demos.
Mar-com. Marketing tooled up you guys. If we agree that the last decade’s biggest shift was with our customers, I think our marketing departments took fast action and finished the decade neck and neck with the customer. They found ways to measure and track our customer’s journey well before they touched our sales departments.
Tools & Tech. Holy cow ya’ll. The average rep now has between seven and eight tools at their fingertips. When we started the decade a CRM and maybe a dialer were the only real requirements, and now we have the cadence tools, the conversation intelligence tools, the data tools, the website or customer scoring and nurturing tools from marketing, dashboard add-ons and gamification as nearly standard. Doubtful this was big? Consider the terms “Tech Stack” and “Sales Enablement” weren’t even terms in 2009.
The outcome? Sales leadership, marketing leadership, and our customers expect more from our sales departments. Now ask yourself this important question:
How has your rep and manager development grown to accommodate this in the past 10 years?
If we’ve been tracking, I would expect to see:
Onboarding training programs lengthening
Tools training improving
Customer, business, and industry acumen skills standard in all onboarding
Sales skills training becoming regular line item vs. one-off events
Structured annual Manager development
Better customer experience in demos
Higher show rates for scheduled secondary meetings/demos
A better customer rating of sales
The first time I presented the statistic on what percent of customers trust salespeople was somewhere in mid 2018. Since then, I’ve redone my slides about three times as the statistic has dropped to an embarrassing three percent.
Take heart, we’re still 1.5 points above politicians, but be clear we’re at the bottom folks. Customers don’t see us as trusted advisors. We’ve lost important ground here.
And while we’ve been in this invisible battle against progress, our hiring pools have shrunk and our roles have specialized. Ten years ago we had reps. Some teams had hunters and farmers. Now we have a complex system of BDR/SDR’s handing off to AE’s who move the account to Account Managers or Customer Success (don’t even get me started on how SaaS and VC have changed our game!). Pile this specialization on the heap of “We expect more from our sales teams” while leaders like you are doing so with less and less experienced reps.
Ten years ago, the average lifespan of an inside sales rep was above two years. The latest statistic from The Bridge Group shows us at about 1.5 years today. Unemployment is at an all-time low and we’re in a war for talent with higher attrition rates.
Sadly, this means we have less time to cram more skills into a less-experienced and soon to leave new hire. This tells me why as an industry we’ve added a lot of sales process and a lot of sales scripts to the mix. Yes, the more we can standardize, the less we have to teach. Brilliant!
Until our teams talk to our customers. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our customer experience and trust is plummeting alongside our rep tenure. People don’t like the over-processed and over-scripted sales experience. Not customers. Not reps.
What will the next decade look like?
So now that I’ve painted such a gloomy picture, what do we do about it? I humbly propose that we look at the next ten years as our opportunity. Hell, not just our opportunity, but our time. Our chance. Our TURN. Our decade. The decade we take BACK the sales process and the customer experience and the rep experience and teach us all to love sales again.
How? By turning to the last frontier we have as sales leaders. The human frontier.
I’ve heard this called re-humanizing sales from my friends at BombBomb and I love it. My friends at Ambition talk about it as the heart (think of the CRM as the brain, the cadence tool as the muscle, and the rep engagement tools as the heart).
If we approach this decade as one where we work with our people – our front line brand new hire BDR all the way to our senior leadership team on their development and engagement, customer engagement will follow.
I call for more rep coaching sessions and manager/rep engagement!
We’ll know we are on the right track when we see our teams start to reduce turnover. When we have a consistent annual budget line-item for development. When we partner more closely with our training and enablement departments. When we teach skills before adding tools. When we convert more inbound leads, have longer BDR calls and higher demo show rates, when our trust percentage climbs back into the double digits, and finally, when we hear more new hires talk about their decision to get into sales on purpose.
Sales is the best damn profession out there.
How many times have you talked about sales careers with someone who started their story with, “Well, I really wound up in sales on accident…”? I’d say upward of 80%. Leaders, that’s not OK. We have one of the most rewarding, flexible and highest-paid professions out there. I want my kids to seek out a sales degree and get excited about their futures in sales! I want that for every new hire each of us make this year, and next, and the next.
We have a big hill to climb. And it’s our job to lead from the front. Get loud. Get proud. (Yeah, it’s sounding a bit like coming out of the closet here, but isn’t that really what we’re doing!?) Let’s shout about our profession from the rooftops and encourage our comrades to do the same. Our future selves will thank us for the help we’re lending toward improved recruiting and attrition. Let’s draw more people to sales and keep them longer by making it the best damn profession out there.
Check it out everyone, the mantra for the decade:
“I’M IN SALES!”
I invite all of my fellow sales professionals to join this movement. It’s our time now.
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Congratulations! The decision to develop your sales reps and managers is a sound one. If you don’t already have battle wounds from our industry’s war for talent, the fight may be coming your direction as our hiring pool shrinks and the demand for digital sellers grows (at a rate of 10-14x traditional sales).
For most of us this means that our talent is harder to find, harder to keep, and coming to us with less and less experience. In other words, we can’t always count on “buying” the talent — especially at the top of the sales funnel — instead we have to prepare our companies to “build” it.
“We can’t count on buying talent, we must learn to build it.”
According to The Bridge Group, the average tenure of a BDR/SDR role in technology is under 15 months and shrinking. And although best practice is being at quota by month 2, the average is closer to month four to six. So we’re left with a year or less of productive sales talent and a lot of open reqs.
So how do we get them up to speed faster and staying longer? Glad you asked: You train them.
Forbes reported last year the #1 thing Millennials search for from an employer is development opportunity.
Sadly, only about half of Reps rate their companies as providing them with the training to be successful (American Association of Inside Sales 2019). That means half the folks working for you right now may be looking elsewhere as your read this.
AA-ISP also taught us that only half of us Inside Sales Leaders actually get the budget we need to provide ongoing development for our teams.
If our industry continues to think of training as something we do when there’s a budget surplus, we simply won’t have the tools and talent we need to attract, ramp, and retain our reps for the foreseeable future. We’ll literally lose the war for talent.
Here’s how to fix it:
Demand a per-employee training line item in your annual budget. Ten years ago we convinced the CFO we needed one for recruiting. Five years ago it was tools. Now it’s got to be training.
Sneak it from a spiff, travel, or tools budget. Hey, there are learning tools and training is a reward, right? Sneak it this year and budget for it next year.
Build an ROI case study. Grab results from your favorite vendor case studies and do the model for your team. Show seats filled faster, reps ramping sooner, and employees staying longer. Not to mention lifts in conversion, average deal size, and pipeline velocity. We’ve seen companies increase conversions by 300%. The average is closer to 75%. But try building an ROI model of even half that and plan to over-perform.
Not comfortable modeling your floor? Cite industry ROI statistics. Training Magazine re[prt that great sales onboarding can cut time to quota by half. CSO Insights tells us that management development improves their teams’ percent to quota by up to 107% (with a 63% average improvement). Where would your floor be if reps hit quota twice as fast or your floor increased quota attainment by 63%?
What do I budget?
Best practice line item per rep is about $1500 and $2500 per manager. If you haven’t trained in a while, have lack-luster onboarding, or a big hill to climb with a strategy shift or goal increase, double it. The average spend across all industries is just under $1000 per person, with IT industries and sales professions trending at or above best-practice spends.
A few more stats to feather your pitch:
On average, the Fortune 100 ‘Best Companies to Work For’ list provide 73 hours of training for full-time employees, compared to 38 hours delivered as standard practice by others.
The top organizations also had 65% less staff turnover than other organizations in the same sector – partly due to their employee development programs.
Sales Architects tells us that 85% of best in class companies use a professional sales curriculum and/or trainer. These companies see reps hit quota faster.
Aberdeen and The American Association of Inside Sales Professionals tell us that a lack of development is a top reason for reps leaving companies.
All preaching and pitching aside, the absolute differentiator for companies in the next five years will be our ability to develop and retain our current teams + our ability to recruit from diverse hiring pools. Now is the time to create an annual development line item in the budget. it’s up to leaders like us to fix the development gap with the generations we are hiring, or the scraping sound you hear today as we recruit from the bottom of the barrel will sound a lot more like a puncture as we blow out the barrel itself.
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If you’re thinking about investing in training your sales staff, you’re on the right track. 85% of best-in-class companies use a professional sales trainer or curriculum (Aberdeen). To get the most out of your investment, there are 5 actions we recommend you do first.
Tip: If you don’t do #3 you should probably not even spend the money. If you do #2 and #5 you’re in the top 10 percent.
#1 – Do an onsite needs analysis that involves your team
Uncovering the root needs and gaps is the first step of any professional training program. Not only will it help your vendor pick the right training modules and tailor them to your situation, but it builds buy-in to the solution.
If possible, involve your trainer in the process by bringing them onsite to observe, ask questions, and get to know the team and form their own conclusions. Not all managers are expert and diagnosing skill gaps yet. So instead of just ordering your prescription from the doctor, do a visit.
Bonus: this will build credibility and excitement for the training, thereby ensuring a higher show rate, buy-in, and waste less time “getting to know you” during training.
#2 – Collect baselines
Decide what metrics, KPI’s and results you’d like to shift (be sure to include all three categories, ask your Factor 8 advisor for help here if you need it). Metrics move quickly, KPI’s a bit faster, and results at end of month. The key is to move all three, but be specific about where and how.
Focusing on the numbers before you start helps target the training to the right phase in the funnel and the right skills in the classroom. For example, a class targeted at filling the top of the funnel won’t focus on closing and overcoming objections, but might impact talk time, number of conversations, conversion rate, and leads passed. Grab these numbers by rep and team over the past 3-6 months and discuss where you’d like them to go by looking at averages and top performers. Now post-training collection and measurement is ready to go!
#3 – Get manager buy-in
An old study by Training Magazine taught us that the two most important factors to get behavior change after training are
What the trainee’s boss said before the training.
What he or she said after the training.
Seriously, all your vendor due-diligence and the front-line supervisor holds all the power. If your management team is on board, your reps will be on board and you have a running start.
To get buy-in, involve managers along the way – collecting needs, baselines, and vendor selection. Over-communicate the goals and be crystal clear on expectations (will they be attending? Participating? Can they do email from the back of the room?) Show them the investment and importance at multiple levels.
Bonus: Be sure managers get their own development. If they haven’t learned how to do coaching yet, your rep training might be better done after a class for managers.
#4 – Do a leadership kickoff
Get the highest honcho you can find, all the leaders, managers and reps on one or several kickoff events. It can be in person or remote and last 30 minutes tops. This act alone will indicate the seriousness of your investment and how much you expect from them.
Talk about the importance of investing in our skills, how important employees are to the company, results you hope to achieve and the impact it will make on the company. Include your vendor, build their credibility and layout specific expectations about start times, participation, making live calls, etc.
Bonus: announce a contest between divisions, teams, or reps based on expected results (see baselines, #2). Talk up the prize, give an outline of how it will be decided, and set a date it is awarded. This is great fodder for follow up emails and announcements to keep the buzz alive after training!
#5 – Pre-book your follow up with leadership
Your vendor may offer post-training follow-up sessions (Factor 8 has three). We answer questions, check results, even listen to calls and certify reps. Get these on calendars BEFORE training and let managers know they are required. .
Also, book results follow-up sessions. I suggest 1 week after training, end of month 1 after training, and also end of month 2, 4, and 6. If you’ve already pulled baselines, an ongoing focus on the results from training will keep focus sharp and coaching new skills top of mind for leaders at all levels. That’s key for sustained behavior change.
Short on bandwidth but have the budget? Do #1 – onsite needs analysis. While your Factor 8 Advisor is onsite, do the kickoff meeting and collect the baselines.
Has anyone else noticed that our new reps aren’t staying as long as they used to?
Five years ago the average lifespan of a sales rep was close to two years. The concept of the BDR / SDR on the front edge of sales was also brand new. Today the latest report by The Bridge Group shows that the average tenure of a BDR / SDR is down to 1.5 years.
Guys, this is a pretty dramatic drop in a short period of time. And I think the way we as Leaders are managing the BDR / SDR role has a lot to do with it. Here’s what’s at play:
The freshest talent goes into these roles. They are our “starter” positions, right? Makes sense. Trouble is…
The BDR/SDR role is also the toughest sales call to make. These guys have the coldest leads in any organization. We’re kind of running them right into brick walls here.
We haven’t changed how we train and onboard these roles. There has been little to no change in the average training spend by organizations over the last five years. This is especially painful when we consider…
We’re scraping the bottom of the talent barrel. Inside sales is growing 10-20x the speed of field sales (depending on the study) and current unemployment rates are at a record low. Result: Our talent pool is going dry. We’re hiring with less experience, less education, less “perfect fit” sellers.
One last scary trend: Our demand for results is skyrocketing. We can thank SaaS for this. A VC-funded SaaS startup (who hire BDR’s like my 7year old goes through a pack of M&M’s) has the pressure of “disruptive growth” on their shoulders. Up and to the right isn’t good enough, these guys want lines that go straight north. This means we aren’t taking the time to develop these folks, we’re not letting a natural learning and experience curve happen. The train is moving fast and as leaders we’re more worried about throwing fuel on the fire than caring about whether or not our fuel is sustainably sourced. (I think that makes new reps coal or wood in this analogy. That was a bit awkward…but the picture it paints isn’t wrong.)
So is this “the perfect talent storm?” I’d venture to say your sales rep recruiting budgets and empty seats say ‘yes’. Recruiting and interviewing sales reps is nearly a full-time pursuit for most sales leaders – pulling focus from the real business of driving sales and developing our reps. If the BDR / SDR position has a revolving door, it’s a big problem for you and a bigger one for the sales industry. Because reps that could have succeeded in better-fit jobs, less pressure, or with more development are revolving right OUT of sales. So what can we expect on the other side of this perfect storm?
A drought is coming.
Because the BDR/SDR role is both a revolving door and entry-level for sales, we’re seeing more promising young talent straight-up leave the sales profession. Old-timers like me remember when we looked at a rep’s skills and decided if they were hunters or farmers. And hell yes, the hunters were harder to find, keep, and motivate. Starting ALL reps in this position will frankly automatically dis-qualify at LEAST half of them from being successful.
And what are we doing to ensure their success? Well, mostly we’re writing them scripts and giving them tools. Hey, I love a tool as much as the next gal, but
No one ever left your organization for lack of tools.
Really. I’ve seen reps still using Excel as a CRM and staying for love of the company, the team, the product. Know why they are leaving?
Young people are exiting sales faster than we can get them successful and show them what an amazing profession this is.
The freedom, the thrill of the hunt, the instant satisfaction in a great call and the deeper feel-goods in helping others. And did we mention commission checks? There’s so much to fall in love with for this profession but we have to update our approach as leaders to get these (sorry, but) kids to drink the Kool-Aid.
Three years ago it was ping-pong tables and free lunch, what is it today? Here are 5 tips on engaging, developing, and KEEPING your new millennial BDR SDR reps longer:
How to engage, develop, and KEEP your new millennial BDR SDR reps longer
Show the career path right away. Don’t just talk about it, let new reps shadow an AE, Account Manager, Sales Manager, or Customer Success Rep in their first 3 months on the job. This helps get a better understanding not just of their future, but of their job today!
Provide ongoing development. A recent Forbes article *link, not sure it was Forbes* taught us the number one thing millennials want ton the job isn’t the paycheck, it’s the development! If you don’t have training in place after onboarding, fix this first. Bonus: it will also help increase sales. (scary fact by AA-ISP in 2019: over half of inside sales companies have no ongoing development in place. Are you one of these?)
Ditch the script. I KNOW it’s tempting. And the fastest way to communicate what you want done on a call. But scripts are demoralizing, ineffective, and confidence killers (*link to more blogs on this). The fix? START with the script and in an interactive training class talk about the GOAL of each section of the script and encourage reps to put this into their own words. Listen to good calls by other reps who go off script. This is a win-win-win folks and it doesn’t have to take a long time.
Customize the development. BDR SDR reps who do as much product training as Account Executives in training will suffer. AE’s need more work on closing and BDR’s need more help with the transition to closing. Need more in the pipeline? Focus on top-of-funnel sales skills like voicemails, introductions, and overcoming brush-off’s. Just like field sales training didn’t help your Account Executives five years ago, your AE training of today isn’t the best fit for your top-of-funnel rep sales skills today.
Teach managers to be great coaches. Just like training can help reps be more successful, work with managers on helping reps FEEL more successful. No one likes waiting a week for a win or leaving a call coaching session feeling like a loser. Young managers (and let’s face it, your BDR managers were probably reps 6 quarters ago, right?) struggle with good call coaching techniques. If they were great reps, they will naturally NOT be great coaches (I live this you guys, trust me. I’m a good seller and a lousy coach and I’ve been working on it for over a decade). In terms of small wins, can your team find three to five KPIs that happen daily? Like callbacks, conversations, follow up appointments booked? If you really want to dig into this and solve it, watch the webinar that I did with ZoomInfo about small wins. Watch it here.
I hope these tactical tips can help us all get ahead of the problem. As leaders, it is imperative that we start to stare at our BDR / SDR attrition and the top solutions of rep development and manager engagement. We know what we need to do. The studies show us in neon letters. Now the tricky part is prioritizing it and executing it.
Our mission at Factor 8 is to help every new seller and manager in inside sales get the blocking and tackling skills to make them more successful at work sooner. There aren’t many companies that focus on this as singularly as we do, and it leaves us a lot of ground to cover. So last year I put 11 years of Factor 8 rep and manager sales skills online and made it an unlimited subscription model that also engages managers. It’s called The Sales Bar. It’s exactly what I wish I had when I started this gig 20 years ago. I also made it a SaaS model (WITH transferable licenses) so you could sneak development into your tools budget. I hope it helps.
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There are millions of inside sales reps in the world.
Reps know this and want to be the one-in-a-million rep that impresses their managers. Managers, on the other hand, should be honing each rep’s skills to mold a team of one-in-a-million reps.
That’s a tall order, right? It’s not as hard as you might think. It all comes down to knowing what makes a successful inside sales rep, and the best practices for training.
Sometime in the last two months, you heard a voice. No, not the crazy hearing voices kind of voice, but the future you, inspired you, the you-can-DO-this-and-you-SHOULD kind of voice.
I call it my little voice. And every once in a while, she puts her foot down and she says, “MORE.” Not more please. Not more if there’s some left after everyone else gets some. More NOW, DAMMIT.
More. . . because I deserve it.
Sometimes this is in a whisper.
You want more out of your career, and I built #GirlsClub to do EXACTLY that.
Now it’s time to apply. This is NOT a time for doubt. NOT a time to postpone. NOT a time to be afraid to raise your hand internally and ask for the time and/or the budget to do this. Rise up. Fill out your application and book a meeting with your manager right now. Seriously, right now.
Explain your aspirations. Give him or her a program information packet you downloaded. Ask for his or her support. Sit tall and ask.
That is step one.
It’s a big one. But it’s critical. And it is time to do it NOW.
YES, there are scholarships available. I’m working my tail off so that you don’t have to ask for the full-boat budget.
How about we meet halfway?
You submit the application. You ask for the budget. You let them know everything it includes and why it’s worth it. Let’s keep moving forward, and if we both get “no’s”, we will pull out.
But please, don’t quit now. I need you to work as hard as I am to get you this new gig.
I can’t WAIT to see your application and your smiling face in this program.
Apply today!
Need help explaining the program? Download the participant and mentor overview here.
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I had the great pleasure of appearing with an all-star cast of Inside Sales experts giving advice to Inside Sales leaders for 2018 sales management strategy planning. Check out the video hosted by Ambition and featuring Jared Houghton, Trish Bertuzzi, Steve Richard, and myself. Tips to find:
Last week my son made his first sales call. For an inside sales thought leader, you have got to believe this was big in my house! My brave six-year-old D.J. read the school script to relatives & friends and got pledges for his APEX fundraiser.
Watching a little human do this for the first time made ME nervous – and OH. SO. PROUD. It reminded me of a few truths we could all keep in mind when preparing new hires to take to the phones for the first time:
Don’t assume anyone can do this
ANY human will get nervous asking people for money over the phone. Let’s all keep this in mind when we ask for more dials and results. His brother BAILED after one call (and he’s the extrovert in the family!!).
Set up small wins early and celebrate BIG
The small wins he got (and we celebrated big time) energized him to make more calls. He was pulling aunties out of the woodwork! When we set up small wins early and celebrate BIG, they’ll be hooked.
Do a better job teaching rejection in new-hire training
When he got his first “no” he totally rolled with it and still wanted to make another call. Why? Because we set it up ahead of time that it would likely happen, why, and what to say. Special shout out to Uncle Shawn who agreed up front to say no to a six-year-old so we could teach this lesson (THAT wasn’t easy!). More “NO” in role plays and more help in why they happen and how to handle them.
Remember that just like a first grader, our new hires watch us to determine how to act. It’s good to show some nerves, to celebrate small wins, and to get right back up like a “no” doesn’t sting a little. I know that the next time I’m in class I’ll be a little less tough on the 23-year-old making their first calls.
By the way, my proudest moment was when he DITCHED THE SCRIPT and felt confident enough to use his own words. I can’t believe I didn’t record it!
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In my line of work, I spend a lot of time on sales floors around the world watching Reps, Managers, Directors, and VP’s try to drive the number. I see well intentioned organizations and leaders spend countless hours and dollars trying to unlock the secret that will bring in more customers and keep them coming back for more. The problem is that they are trying to run before they can walk.
If you’re behind the number for 2017 or wondering how you will turn things around for next year, maybe you need to start with the basics. Are the steps you are taking going to provide a clearer path to success, or are you making changes for change’s sake? Here are five of the most common ways that I see companies fail their salespeople, and it’s killing their numbers.
Poor Compensation Plans – You’ve heard the phrase that salespeople are coin operated…so why do companies continue to design compensation plans that limit their reps ability to earn? Are you really going to punish your sales team for closing “too big” of a deal? Think through your comp plan enough to ensure that it can account for big wins. When someone on the sales team closes a huge deal there should be bells ringing, applause breaking out, and the leader on the floor slapping high fives, not in her office worrying about how that deal will push them beyond the commission budget. The second common failure related to compensation plans is the overly complex comp plan. You want to account for every contingency and every activity that you want to incent, and end up creating a 7 page document that requires four Excel sheets and an advanced degree in mathematics to calculate commissions. If you want compensation to drive behavior, make it simple enough so that your team can figure out on the fly how each deal/lead they close is going to impact their check.
Putting people with no sales experience in charge of sales – This one always shocks me. Would you make someone with no financial background your CFO? I’m not sure if companies don’t view sales as a “professional” department that requires experienced leadership, or if they think it’s a good way to round out an executive’s resume, but it can put your revenue generation machine in jeopardy. Fair or unfair, salespeople have a hard time following someone that’s never done the job. It’s also very difficult to make sound decisions around things like territory planning, sales process, compensation, and tools when you haven’t experienced the good and bad that sales has to offer.
Information overload – While it is usually done with the best of intentions, too much information can be paralyzing to a sales team. Resist the urge to jam every shiny new Salesforce plug-in down your team’s throat. Information without intelligence is useless to your sales team. Almost every salesperson I know would rather have one or two actionable nuggets of information than 100 potentially relevant pieces of data. I would also argue that, in many cases, the amount of data out there is making salespeople lazier. If a lead doesn’t come across with a bright flashing arrow showing the exact path to the sale, the process grinds to a halt. How can I possibly pitch this customer without knowing which direction his office desk chair faces? Your sales leadership team needs to be an advocate for the reps here. Establish a process for determining what information makes its way to the rep’s desks and why. Filter it hard. And when something does go through to the team, take the time to explain what it is and how they can use it to sell more effectively. If you can’t connect those dots, they don’t need it.
Lack of investment in rep development – When I hear reps tell me that their onboarding process consisted of 3-4 days of HR paperwork, systems training, and online selling modules, I wonder how the company expects anyone to succeed. There are too many organizations that strive to constantly reduce the time and money invested in onboarding salespeople because (a) the turnover is high so why waste the money, (b) an untrained rep is better than an empty seat, or (c) every day they spend in training is a day they’re not selling. I’ll tell you this, an untrained/poorly trained rep can do a ton of damage to your bottom line and your reputation….and they’ll still leave. Especially if you are hiring entry level salespeople, you need to provide them with sales training specific to your organization and customers. Show them what good looks like and give them a chance to sharpen those skills in a safe environment. If you don’t have the people internally to do it, bring someone in from the outside. You can’t afford to screw this one up. I won’t even get started on the lack of ongoing development…a rant for another day.
Spreading sales managers too thin – I can’t tell you the number of times that I walk on to a sales floor and see a flurry of rep activity and not a manager in sight. When I ask the reps what interaction they have with their manager, I get responses like: “we’re supposed to have weekly 1:1’s but they usually get postponed”, “she’s always in meetings”, or “I try not to bother him because he’s so busy.” The sad part is that when I ask the managers what they would do if they could change one thing, I almost always hear that they want to spend more time with their reps. Unfortunately, they are pulled in a hundred different directions by partners, bosses, and other departments, and their reps are usually the piece that slips through the cracks. Front line sales managers are some of the most impact people in your entire organization. They are responsible for translating senior leadership’s vision into daily action. They are the close enough to the customers to know what’s going on in the market, and high enough in the organization to do something about it. Take the administrative crap off of their plates and keep them on the floor!
If you caught yourself cringing while you read this list or a few (or all!) items hit a little too close to home, you’re not alone. The good news is that it’s not too late to make some changes and get things heading in the right direction. If you’re not sure where to start or what changes can make the biggest impact, I’d love to have that conversation with you.
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