Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales leadership expert.
World-Class Sales Organization.
We hear those words a lot. Some companies aspire to it. Others claim to be there already. You are more likely to hear claims like those from a large enterprise, but you have better odds of actually finding it in a small to midsize company.
World-Class Sales Organization.
Some would say it's a description of a company's people. Others would suggest it has more to do with results. Many would say it's about the size of the sales force. And a few would point to sales leadership and discipline.
World-Class Sales Organization.
The top team of sales strategists at my sales leadership consulting and training firm, Kurlan & Associates, set out to define what a world-class sales organization is and we developed this model.
There is an important distinction to be made here. At a large company, there could be one or more individuals responsible for each spoke on that wheel. In a small business, one person, and sometimes fewer than that, may be responsible for all of the spokes. And in many companies, some of those spokes are placed under the direction of people who aren't qualified to lead them. In other companies, there are huge gaps where some or all of one or more spokes are missing.
Let's discuss the challenges of this model in a smaller company where there may be a half dozen salespeople or less reporting to one sales manager. How is that one person supposed to handle:
- Sales Leadership
- Sales Architecture
- Sales Infrastructure
- Sales Talent Management
- Sales Enablement
- Sales Human Capital
Some of the help we provide in small and mid-market companies occurs when some or all of these pieces are missing altogether, or when they have not been well-defined or properly executed.
We are nearly halfway through 2013 and this is a good time to take stock and determine where the gaps exist in your sales organization and then deal with them. It's not as important that you get it right as it is that you have the above in place. You can get them right over time.
© Copyright Dave Kurlan All Rights Reserved
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales leadership expert.
A recent article in Columbus Business First discussed background checks and use of personality tests. The most important line in the article read, "Personality often is the best insight into whether a person is a good cultural fit for a specific company."
Notice that they didn't say that personality is the best insight into whether a person will succeed in sales. That's because it isn't. Never was. Never will be.
Despite that, article after article points to the advantage of personality tests as a sales pre-employment tool. And most personality assessments now claim to be able to help you eliminate sales hiring mistakes too. The reality though is that almost every available "sales assessment" is a marketing-modified version of a personality assessment. By marketing-modified, I mean that the actual findings are the exact same findings you will see on their standard personality test, but the names or labels of the findings have been modified to sound as if they are sales findings. As with costumes, you only need to take off the mask and you'll see what's underneath. No exceptions. No apologies.
Personality tests aren't predictive either. Oh, they say that they are? Then why is their validation of choice "construct validity" rather than "predictive validity"?
There is only one original, sales-specific assessment that collects, measures, and provides true sales findings and its predictive validity is incomparable. Objective Management Group (OMG) has been perfecting sales selection for 23 years and you can't beat these two statistics:
- 75% of Candidates, who are not recommended but get hired anyway, fail within 6 months.
- 92% of Candidates, who are recommended and hired, rise to the top half of their sales forces within 12 months.
Are you using the right assessment?
The right assessment is only part of the solution to developing consistency with your sales hiring and selection. You also need a best-practices, sales recruiting process. You can see how your existing process rates by using our free tool, the Sales Recruiting Process Grader.
And of course, sales management plays a part in your hiring process too. They're responsible for on-boarding, messaging, coaching, accountability, direction, guidance and support. If they don't perform any one or more of those functions effectively, even a strong salesperson can fail.
Finally, no process is stronger than its weakest link. In the sales recruiting process, that weakness could be your job posting. Most companies get that part completely wrong, attracting the wrong salespeople into the candidate pool and if you don't have the right candidates in the pool, the process, assessment and sales management become non-factors.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales leadership expert.
How many times has this happened to you?
A salesperson tells you about a great-looking opportunity that has been forecast to close this month. "We're definitely getting this and it's an awesome opportunity for us. We're going to knock this one out of the park!"
At the end of the month, the deal hasn't closed and you question your salesperson about it. You are told that the decision-maker has been away on vacation, but as soon as he returns, the deal is sure to get done.
A month later, nothing has changed. This time, the salesperson admits that he has had a little difficulty reaching the decision-maker, but he is sure that nothing has changed. You are assured that everything is good.
Six months later, when the deal still hasn't closed, you force the salesperson to archive the opportunity with the salesperson still not understanding what went wrong.
The exact same thing happens in baseball - especially with Little Leaguers.
When the pitcher throws the ball toward the plate, no pitch looks more enticing, easier to hit or simpler to track than the one thrown at eye-level to the hitter. The hitter has an extremely short time to react and decide whether or not to swing and the pitch is simply irresistable. So time after time, the undisciplined batter swings - and misses - every single time.
We know why they swing - the pitch looks so, so good. But why do they miss?
A ball thrown at eye-level is much too high to hit and out of the strike zone. When thrown fast, it is pretty much impossible to hit. The high fastball - a Little Leaguer will swing underneath it and be late swinging every single time. So, rather than teaching them how to hit that pitch, it's important to teach them how to not swing at that pitch.
Back to your salespeople. The very opportunities that look so good to them - the high fastballs of opportunities where they hear what they want to hear - cause them to skip steps and milestones. Along the way, they fail to question things like competition, decision-makers, timelines, compelling reasons, things that can go wrong, incumbents, preferences, pricing and more. Just like with the Little Leaguers, your salespeople must learn to lay off of those great sounding opportunities - until they are completely qualified. It's not a matter of helping your salespeople hit these opportunities out of the park as much as it's a need to disqualify these opportunities so that your salespeople don't swing and miss.
Salespeople are just like Little Leaguers, only they should know better. Why don't they? They share a weakness where they both get excited or emotional, and when that happens, their judgement can be faulty. It takes discipline to lay off the high fastball and ask the necessary questions when the prospect is saying that they are ready to buy.
Discipline and consistency - two qualities that great salespeople share.
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales leadership expert.
The Pipeline, The Funnel and the Inaccurate Forecast - It gets a bit scary when people who are experts in one thing write about another. Today's example was sent to me by OMG partner Mike Shannon. He sent along a recent BtoBonline.com post by Jeff Perkins. Jeff suggests that the sales funnel is a thing of the past, but his examples, and therefore reasons, are way off base. He seems confused about what the sales pipeline or funnel is supposed to do for us.
His examples are that people change their minds about what they will buy and/or take varying amounts of time to become customers.
But pipeline isn't about the what or the how long; it's all about traction, movement, the if and the when. The funnel or pipeline shows prospects moving from stage to stage in the sales process whether they are buying one or ten, spending $10K or $100K, or buying in 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months or 2 years.
Many sales leaders are confused about the pipeline. After all, the single biggest complaint I hear is the one about inaccurate forecasts followed closely by delayed closings. The pipeline should be the single most accurate predictor of future revenue. If your pipeline is not providing you with that information, something is wrong with either your process, your stages, your criteria, your CRM, or your people. And don't rule out yourself on this one. Many leaders have simply given up! You must fix it. The pipeline should also be a powerful coaching tool. Is yours?
The Termination, The Cake and the Celebration - I was called into a conference room last week where I found my team waiting for me with a cake. I asked if we were celebrating our big month, but was told that we were celebrating the one-year anniversary of a firing!
That particular firing was a huge milestone and it allowed us to build a better team, a better product and a better company. Sales leaders often fear, delay and sometimes refuse to put termation on the table. We hear things like, "You need to know that we aren't getting rid of anyone." in the same conversation as "Our numbers are unacceptable." More importantly, sales leaders often worry that terminations will be viewed as a negative or demotivate the team when, in reality, the opposite is usually true. Wouldn't a cake and celebration by the remaining and new team members be a good indication of that?
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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales leadership expert.
I have to question Geoffrey James for an article that he recently posted on Inc. Magazine's online site.
He opens the article by saying that for most companies "the ability to find potential customers is the difference between growth and bankruptcy." His opening might be a bit of an exaggeration. The reality is that it could be the difference between growth and lack of growth because most companies that aren't growing aren't going bankrupt.
In his article, he shares a systematic approach for prospecting "loosely based upon a conversation with Thomas Ray Crowel." My interpretation of his use of the word "loosely" is that he contributed his own opinions to this systematic approach. That makes the article all the more disappointing.
In the fifth step of the prospecting call, he says that if the prospect sounds interested, you should skip the script and jump right to the close. Really? Isn't this a prospecting call? He makes it sound more like telemarketing than prospecting for appointments or meetings. It certainly doesn't apply to a complex B2B sale!
He also suggests that you create a qualifying script using the old - very old - method of authority, budget and need. If you are selling something that requires authority and budget, then you'll require more than need to get them to spend their money and you certainly wouldn't be able to jump right to the close. Why would we want to qualify this early? Until we have heard that they have a compelling reason to buy, they won't have an incentive to answer any qualifying questions!
This systematic approach (250 cold calls/week) is based on a salesperson making cold calls all day. That in itself is very archaic and when it is performed as a full-time function, it's usually by the lead generation team, not salespeople. After all, if the salespeople are making 250 calls per week, when would they have time to conduct their scheduled sales calls and meetings?
Geoffrey's subtitle for the article is a "step by step approach for building up a sales pipeline." Lead generation people don't have pipelines and people who close on the first phone call don't have them either. His steps and examples are not consistent with salespeople who actually build sales pipelines!
If you need to connect with business prospects and build a sales pipeline, read Frank Belzer's terrific book, Sales Shift. His book has some truly relevant, modern, effective and efficient methods for finding and closing new business - the new way. And if you want to pound the phones and dial for dollars, my book, Baseline Selling - How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball, has a terrific prospecting section and you can get some terrific tips on reaching 1st base at the Baseline Selling site.
You can also find some good articles on prospecting right here on my Blog.
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