You can mow your own lawn, plant your own shrubs, paint your own house, repair your own car, and clean your own house.  You can do your own accounting, write your own agreements, and generate your own payroll too.  But you probably don't do most of these things.  Professionals do a much better job and save you a tremendous amount of time.

From time to time, clients want to handle some of the services we provide in-house.  "Why can't we do the sales process ourselves?"  They can, but a few questions come to mind.  If they didn't have an effective, efficient, optimized, formal, structured sales process for the last 20 years, where would this expertise suddenly come from to create this process tomorrow?  What if they get it wrong?

"Daily huddles sound simple enough.  Why can't we do that on our own?"  They can, but there is also the matter of getting the salespeople to participate, embrace the huddles and find them useful and important.  Much of that is dependent upon getting the metrics and the huddle format right.

"We have people who can provide sales training and we expect them to do it."  Most companies with in-house trainers often don't realize that while their trainers' expertise is training, the subleties and nuances of selling, and the sales weaknesses that must be overcome, require skills and experience that in-house trainers usually lack.

Beyond these obvious challenges exists a 600 pound gorilla.  The reason that any of these examples would be implemented at a company is usually to improve the sales culture, generate additional revenue and improve sales effectiveness.  Salespeople usually resist efforts to change things up.  When you combine resistant salespeople with homegrown solutions and don't get it correct the first time (right out of the gate and I mean nail it), you'll have an even bigger problem on your hands.  You won't get a second chance to tweak and get it right.  You get one chance to state your case, introduce the changes and get salespeople to embrace them.  If you don't know what you're doing, can't back it up with science, or fail to make a case and impress your salespeople, you're dead in the water, in a worse place than where you started, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Don't risk it.  Leave sales force evaluations, sales process, recruiting process, selection criteria, sales and sales management training, CRM selection, sales management coaching, and sales culture change to the experts.  You'll be glad you did.

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.

At a large company, there could be one or more individuals responsible for each category in the model.  In a small business, one person (and sometimes fewer than that) may be responsible for all categories.  And in many companies, some of those categories 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 categories are missing.

Let's discuss the challenges of this model in a smaller company where there may be a half dozen salespeople reporting to one sales manager.  How is one person supposed to handle:

• Sales Leadership 
• Sales Architecture
• Sales Infrastructure
• Sales Talent Management
• Sales Enablement
• Sales Human Capital

Yesterday, we were in a small seaside village and in a nautical gift shop, I read this sailing quote:

"The pessimist complains about the wind.  The optimist expects it to change.  The realist adjusts the sails."

Translated for selling:

"The pessimist complains about the prospect.  The optimist expects him to buy.  The realist adjusts the sales strategy."

Let's look at these three points a little more closely, shall we?

The pessimist: Sure, the pessimist will complain about the prospect, but more specifically, that the prospect wasn't open, was hostile, talking with competitors, wouldn't share a budget, wanted only a proposal, wouldn't commit to anything, blocked him from reaching a decision-maker, etc.  If this is normal buyer behavior, then this calls for a salesperson!  All salespeople must be able to navigate around and push through these common issues or we really can't call them salespeople.

The optimist:  The optimist has happy ears.  The bigger the opportunity, the better the opportunity.  The better they got along, the better the chance of a sale.  The longer they talked, the shorter the sales cycle.  Optimists are just as much of a liability as pessimists because they don't inspect or question what they hear.  They assume that everything will be okay.  While a positive attitude is good, it can be terribly frustrating!

The realist:  This is exactly who you need on your sales force.  Salespeople must be optimistic about their outcomes, but pessimistic about the things that could go wrong to derail the opportunity and prepared to overcome them.  The realist is flexible enough to be both pessimistic and optimistic at the appropriate times.

So, sailing, selling - the approach is the same except that while wind helps to expand your sails, having salespeople who are full of air doesn't help to expand your sales.

Most salespeople are good at talking and presenting - they are full of air - but 74% of them are ineffective when it comes to listening and asking good questions.  How about your sales force?  

The typical swimming pool, lawn and garden do not require a lot of maintenence time in order to keep them looking good.  For the most part, you develop a routine, determine a frequency, allot a certain amount of time each week, and you're golden.  Sales calls/meetings should be similar in that most of your calls/meetings should follow a similar routine (your sales process), last approximately the same amount of time (ask for enough time to complete your sales process), happen with the same frequency (either a certain number of calls/meetings per day or week; or a certain number of calls/meetings per sales cycle) and you're golden.

But what happens when disaster strikes?  Recently, Hurricane Irene left a large path of destruction along much of the eastern United States.  What routinely took an hour to maintain could now take up to a week or more to get the same result.  You can't rush, you need to be extremely careful, you might have to get help and the work may be much more labor intensive and difficult.

What about a sales disaster?  First, what are the sales disasters?

1. Your contact departs from a major account
2. You're told that your competitor will likely get the business
3. Your customer is dissatisfied
4. Your customer is angry with you or your company
5. A customer cancels their business with your company
6. A customer gives you an ultimatum and the offer is not acceptable
7. You can't meet their deadline or spec
8. Your product fails or your service doesn't work
9. They misunderstood something you said and won't talk with you
10. The prospect disappears or goes into hiding

Sales Disasters and Storm Damage are very much alike and you handle the recovery in very much the same way - slowly and carefully.

When a company is ready to hire someone for its first sales role, they often face a big dilemma:

• Should it be a salesperson?
• Should it be a selling sales manager?
• Should it be a selling Sales VP?

A salesperson could hit the phones and/or the pavement and generate some business fairly quickly, but won't be able to provide the strategic thinking that a VP would.  As a result, there won't be much focus on systems, processes or the best approach to the marketplace.

A sales manager, who could begin as a salesperson, should also be able to generate some revenue and transition back into sales management but this presents problems too.  At some point, the sales manager must stop selling to begin building a sales force and by then, the company cannot afford to lose the revenue being generated.  The sales manager, being more tactical than a strategic Sales VP, will also be challenged when it comes to systems, processes, market approach and strategy.

As we have already discussed, a VP provides the strategy and infrastructure the company will require, but typically comes from a corporate environment and won't have much desire to perform actual sales activity and sell.  Often, the revenue generating must wait until the VP hires salespeople and the early hires are almost always the wrong hires.  Why?  The type of salesperson who succeeded at the VP's prior companies may not succeed at this new company where they are likely to encounter significantly more resistance and may not be able to overcome it.

So who should a company choose as its first sales hire?

In my opinion, it doesn't cost that much more to hire a Sales VP AND a couple of salespeople.  In that way, the company gets its much needed infrastructure and strategy AND there are some salespeople attempting to generate revenue.  The company will likely replace all 3 sooner than expected, but they'll be off and running more effectively and efficiently than most companies ever do.

Let's look at your company, brands, products and services.  Is there any possibility that someone could go wrong buying from you? 

To answer this question, let's first look at Apples's App Store. Normally I simply find the app I need and download it on the spot but over the holidays I had enough time to actually browse the App store.  When I got to the Book category I browsed by popularity and noticed that THE MOST POPULAR books for the iPad were not the latest romance novels, thrillers or biographies, and they weren't the New York Times bestsellers either.  Ready?

1. Christmas Tale
2. Shakespeare
3. The Bible Reader
4. Marvel Comics
5. DC Comics
6. Twas The Night Before Christmas
7. Toy Story Read-Along
8. The Velveteen Rabbit
9. The Holy Bible - King James Edition
10. Dr. Seuss's ABC  3.99
11. Archie Comics
12. MeeGenius! Children's Books
13. Alice for the iPad-Lite
14. NIV Bible
15. Three Little Pigs
16. Jingle All the Way
17. Lesbian Short Stories, Part 1
18. Children's Bible
19. The Cat in the Hat 3.99
20. Comics+

Kids, comics, Bibles, and Freebies pretty much sum it up.  Here's another way of looking at it.  Except for #17, they are all either safe, easy, traditional, low cost or tried and true choices.  You just can't go wrong making those choices.

If we eliminate FREE from the list, the only significant change is that the comics disappear to be replaced by more kids books, bibles and JFK: 50 Days.

If we eliminate the two Christmas books in the top 10, they would simply be replaced with two  non-holiday kids books.  If we eliminate the kids books altogether they would be replaced by more Bibles and Bible readers, and A Tale of Two Cities. And to reach the last of my top 10 paid non holiday, non kids books, Message Bible, we would reach the 166th most popular download.

Back to my opening question. Is there any possibility that someone could go wrong buying from you?  Is buying from your company the safest choice?  Is it the easiest choice?  Is it the traditional choice?  Is it free or very low priced? Is it the tried and true choice?

If it's not any one of those, then your salespeople better be performing in a big way (and I don't mean doing demos, presentations, quotes and proposals either).  Because the only way to achieve and sustain success when you have competition that is a safer, easier, more traditional, lower priced or tried and true choice is for your salespeople to sell their asses off (and I'm not talking about hard work either).

Your salespeople must be smarter, more effective, more strategic and more tactical than ever before.  They must also be more efficient, more capable and more resilient than ever before.  And don't even think about sending them out there without an optimized, formal, structured sales process.

How many of your salespeople qualify?

Don't forget to vote for my Blog for Top Sales Blog of the Year here.

On yesterday's episode of Meet the Sales Experts, my three guests, sales development experts Chris Mott, Frank Belzer and Rick Roberge, discussed the topics behind their upcoming presentations at the MIT Sloan School of Business Sales Club Conference on May 7.

When addressing a listener's question about skeptical prospects, it was interesting to listen, not only to their answers, but to HOW they answered.

Frank was strategic.

Rick was tactical.

Chris asked questions to further clarify.

Great salespeople must be able to easily use all three approaches on their sales calls.  Salespeople that struggle tend to have just one approach and it won't work all the time.  A salesperson who defaults to tactics may lack the ability to strategically set the context for those tactics.  A salesperson who defaults to strategy may not be able to dive down deep and wide enough to ask concrete questions and provide specific examples.  And a salesperson who doesn't first ask a bunch of quality questions to identify the real issue will waste their time talking about the wrong solutions.

How effective are your salespeople with these three approaches?

Click here to listen to yesterday's show.

This is the 9th in the series of articles on my Top 10 Sales Management Functions.

#9 - STRATEGY

Strategy comes in several forms and is required in different dosages depending on the position.  For example, a line level sales manager may be more concerned with call strategy while a Worldwide VP Sales may be more concerned with market strategy.  At the VP level, strategy is far more important than tactics while at the sales manager level, tactics are more important than strategy.

Let's look at the various strategies that we should be discussing:

• Market Strategy
• Growth Strategy
• Pricing Strategy
• Competitive Strategy
• Recruiting Strategy
• Account Strategies
• Call Strategies
• Compensation Strategy
• Development Strategy
• Major Account Strategy
• Lead Generation Strategy
• Training Strategy
• Territory Strategy

In your company there may be more and there are probably less but you get the picture.  Strategies are different than plans because strategies are the essence of what will make the plans work.  They incorporate:

• goals
• decisions, rules, and/or guidelines
• method of accomplishment
  
• benefits of this approach
• likely obstacles and how formidable they may be
  
• how we will overcome the likely obstacles
• measurable milestones and anticipated dates
  
• contingencies
• steps 
  
• communication of the strategy
• buy-in from those responsible for executing the strategy
• accountability of those responsible for executing the strategy
• periodic reviews
  

In our discussion of coaching, we identified pre-call strategizing as one of the most important coaching components along with post-call debriefing.  So strategizing and coaching can overlap  in much the same way the accountability and strategizing will overlap.  So it should be obvious that recruiting and strategizing will overlap too.

Let's discuss Development Strategy. Some people are simply more strategic than others. For example, if you aren't naturally as strategic as you should be, you can either develop this discipline, or better align your role with your strengths.  We all know that many great salespeople become ineffective sales managers when they aren't able to excel at coaching and accountability, and when they want to be hero closers rather than developers who generate revenue through others. This is a classic example of someone who should return to sales. Titles should define what we do, not who we are.

(c) Copyright 2009 Dave Kurlan