A few years back I worked for someone who actually said his product sold itself. Goes to show you smart people say stupid things. I often wondered if he actually “believed” this.

It’s no accident that people buy from one company versus another. It’s a group effort by all but Sales is at the forefront. Yes a good product is the nucleus but if the price isn’t right or the service stinks then what good is it? If you are offering a product no one else has then your product may just sell itself in a way; there’s still advertising and marketing as people need to hear about it. But for most businesses competition is fierce and they need to do it better than the other guy.

People buy from people they like is heard often what this means is people buy from someone they trust to service them, they can depend on in a rush situation and even more importantly when there is a problem they can rely on fair dealings.

Yes like anything in life people do get settled in with a company and don’t want to change until something goes wrong. If it does for a company giving a lot of business to a vendor it’s a no brainer but when the company is small and doesn’t do the volume then sometimes they don’t get the same treatment. Being in sales, I have always given customers the 4-star treatment.

I have worked for many small to midsize companies and not one of them ever sat with the Sales Dept and worked as a team it was almost like the Sales Dept. were piranhas and cashflow or production seem to have been more of a focused, concentrated effort then building and expanding sales. I think management’s attitude is, “What am I paying Sales for if they don’t promote and sell?” Often management has lots of meetings about why Sales’ hadn’t achieved numbers but rarely talks about how Management could partner with sales.

If I had my druthers all businesses should be created by natural born sales or marketing people. These businesses seem to thrive better than most. Yes if you have the cheapest prices and service, well you can do business but it seems one would want to be the best of the best and not just settle for mediocrity no matter how much money you are making. Is it the money or the passion to do the job?

Ever try to sell someone and can’t then the owner of the company intercedes, drops the price and he GETS the sale only to rub it in your face? It takes no skill to give something away any idiot can do that. Many salespeople would love the authority to be able to make these kinds of decisions without prodding and convincing management to give a concession to a customer. Management will allow an accounting person to handle all their money with, sometimes, little overview yet haunt Sales for wanting to give a 2% discount on an order to keep a customer happy.

All aspects of your business needs attention much like gardening. If you plant seeds they need attention, water, good soil, sunlight, fertilizer and patience. This is the same for businesses and people. Quit replacing and start to make your business grow.

I don’t know a thing about you, but I’ll bet that people find it tiresome and grueling to attend meetings that include not even the smallest amount of fun. Yes, business meetings should be formal and geared towards accomplishing the agenda but that does not mean it should not be fun, right? Why not include sale meeting entertainment sometimes just to maintain that enthusiasm of your employees and at the same time, energize them for another round of work?

Having sales meetings are vital for the development of your company. During these meetings, issues regarding marketing strategies and progress will be discussed and if problems arise, solutions will carefully be thought of. It is therefore very important that these meetings are well prepared and will serve their purpose.

There are different things that you can do to make sure that your sales meeting will be effective and will be beneficial to you, your staff, and the clients. How? First of all, sales meetings should be well planned. Having meetings with no specific agenda, or not giving guidelines to the people who are needed in the meeting will make things confusing. In fact, it may even make the meeting useless. Why? It is because you and your team won’t have a specific and concrete idea of what to accomplish.

During the meeting per se, you must encourage your people to talk. It’s not all about you, the head, or any speaker. Knowing what your team has to say about the strategies, tips they would want to share with others, or discussing any difficulties or problems encountered. In this way, you would be able to interact with them, and at the same time, discuss business related matters.

Lastly, do not fail to acknowledge the effort given by your team. Congratulate people who have achieved their marketing goals, appreciate their allotted time for the project, and thank them for working on deals. These positive reinforcements will serve as motivation to your sales team.

Now, aside from the tips given, another way to keep your meeting productive and fun is by including sale meeting entertainment. Sale meeting entertainment will make old style meetings exciting, memorable, and at the same time, effective. There are a lot of entertainment forms that you could choose from. For example, hiring a comedian to experience sale meeting entertainment to your employees is a good idea.

Variety acts like mentalists, jugglers, and magicians are also another option. Interactive events and game rentals add to the many ways of sale meeting entertainment. Sales meeting entertainment will not only bring in the fun to work, it would also help build team work and camaraderie between your employees. It is still best to work in an enjoyable environment where you could laugh with your teammates, right?

For 25 year, Funny Business Agency has been a top resource for companies and event planners looking for expertise in the corporate entertainment market. With over 3,000 entertainers and events nationwide, Funny Business has provided entertainment for such companies as Legos, General Foods, Kelloggs, Pfizer, Honda Transmissions, Frito Lay, Iams, Proctor & Gamble, Perrigo and more.

It is a known fact that people tend to work harder and more intelligently for the people they like and care about. This is why building a team- putting names to faces and faces to names, so to speak, and adding personal spin to make people real and likable on your proposal team- goes a long way towards helping the proposal effort.

Any proposal requires a little or, more often, a lot of extra effort from a person- extra creativity, extra dedication, extra hours, extra resourcefulness… the list goes on. Anything that goes beyond the call of duty requires people to exhibit good will, and the fact that we do more for the real people we know and like is programmed in our psyche. Especially if there are no other incentives, such rewards to winning proposal teams or promotions to new positions on the program that was awarded, generating good will through team building is essential.

Here are five simple techniques you can implement on your proposal immediately.

Technique 1. Require the ENTIRE proposal team to be present at the kick-off meeting. This includes ALL the writers and contributors as well as the management. This is one of those non-negotiable things where management has to clear their calendars, and people dedicated to their day jobs on projects have to let their customers know that they have to attend the kick-off. This has to be a factor in your scheduling and budgeting.

Insist that people attend your kick-off meeting in person, since the first most important kick-off goal is to make people more willing to do a lot more for the people they like and care about. If a couple of people, no matter how much they try to clear their schedules, cannot participate in your meeting, you will need to plan to do a mini-kick-off session for them later, and also to speak about them in detail at the original kick-off. Prior to the original kick-off, request their resume, their information, or even their photo to show to the team.

If a physical meeting is not feasible, video teleconferencing technology is the next best alternative – even if it is as simple as using Skype. Also, don’t rely on just a phone line and emailed presentation. Instead, use collaboration tools, such as NetMeeting, LiveMeeting, and GoToMeeting. This will reduce the likelihood that the attendees will lose track of your presentation’s progress as you flip the slides, and get distracted. Make an extra effort to get remote attendees involved and speaking up, and insist that no one multitasks.

Technique 2. Start your meeting with ice-breaker introductions. Even if some people know each other, there is no better way to get everyone to liven up than asking each attendee to take one minute to answer the following three questions about themselves:

1. Their name and company

2. How can they best contribute to this proposal based on their experience

3. One fact about their lives or themselves they consider unusual, special, or fun.

Answers to the last question transform the atmosphere in the room. People start laughing, they make jokes, they ooh and aah. After everyone has shared their information, they stop being strangers in suits and turn into fellow human beings. You can get really creative with an ice breaker question. For example, you could ask, What are you most proud of in your life? As you invent more ice-breaker questions, important rule for this exercise is to not ask a question people would lose face or get in trouble for answering. Keep it light and positive.

Technique 3. Explicitly state that proposal is a TEAM EFFORT. Basketball or Football teams have the word TEAM used every day as part of their coaching, and being a team player is emphasized over everything else. Somehow, on many proposals this message gets lost, and people focus on getting a bunch of individual performers together instead of emphasizing collaboration. It is amazing that many of us spend so much time implying things, beating around the bush, and feeling like heroes, all without ever asking for what we need. Since the goal is team building, state it, and explain what it means. Team effort means clear, open, and honest communication; collaborative decision-making; seeking people’s input; collaborative brainstorming to capitalize on the team’s expertise; collaborative writing; and no pride of authorship.

Technique 4. Prepare in advance and pass around the Contact List to fill in missing data including home numbers, and a field stating “Availability During the Proposal.”This sets expectations correctly for when someone may be unavailable and therefore when they could be reached ahead of that time. Or, it enables them to show that they are busy working during the day, but are committed to donating their evenings and weekends to proposal work. This is especially useful when your proposal effort takes place in the summer, around holidays, or vacation seasons. This way your team will have a chance to plan their interfaces better. Another useful field is “Time Zone” if you have the team across the country or across the globe.

Technique 5. Feed your proposal team. There is nothing like food that conveys hospitality and caring for people. Proposals do cost a lot of money, but it is baffling that so many companies try to save money on food, while food is by far the smallest budget item in the proposal. As inexpensive as good food is, it goes a surprisingly long way to make people feel welcome and appreciated. There are many ways to avoid paying high catering fees, and to feed the whole team a gourmet breakfast at a third of the price that a caterer would charge. Just make sure that you get a small budget pre-approved from the start, so that you get reimbursed for the receipts, and then stop by a grocery store to get fruit, and bakery on the way to get bagels, pastries, and real cream for coffee, and you will feed a couple of dozen of people for under forty bucks.

Also, do not bring in the same old tired sandwiches and pizza for lunches that feel like a brick in one’s stomach. For the same price or cheaper, you can get chafing dishes from caterers, which are often advertised as feeding 10 but that can easily feed 15 or 20 – and they are WAY healthier and easier on one’s waistline. I also usually ask people whether they are vegetarians, vegans, Kosher, have major food allergies, or have major likes and dislikes. You will be asking people to sacrifice their personal time and energy, so this is the least you can do to make everyone feel welcome and cared for.

There are, of course, more advanced techniques for creating fun and team spirit, such as contests, spot awards, games, and ways to reward individual performance, but these five simple techniques will get you the most mileage. These are the basics without which cohesive proposal teams are difficult to pull off. These techniques don’t cost you much to implement, but their impact lasts longer than the proposal itself and creates better work environments and better companies.

Many sales professionals are very comfortable maintaining long term relationships and developing repeat business from existing clients. However, it is the goal of every company to retain existing business and to develop new clients and new sales. This involves identifying a pool of sales leads, and converting some of these leads to new business.

Key Points with Sales Leads

There are several key points when it comes to beginning work on developing your leads.

1. EVERY lead is precious, do not dismiss it easily.
2. Keep an open mind about every lead. Sales people make assumptions about the potential of each lead, whether this person is likely to buy or whether they will be interested in our products. Unfortunately, clients that prove to have a huge spend do not come with a label on their foreheads! Work every lead until you have firm evidence that this is NOT a prospect.
3. Think of yourself as competing with another very good Sales Person rather than an opposing Company. If this lead is a real prospect, they WILL buy from someone. Is it going to be you, or is in going to be the other guy who gets the sale?
4. Plan how you will work those leads effectively, develop a good personal management system.

Set Targets

Sales is a numbers game, the bigger the numbers the better the Sales Person! However, when it comes to managing leads, it is better to think in terms of conversion rates rather than flat numbers. The reason for this is simple. Take 2 sales people, one with 10 sales and one with 20 sales in a week. You might at first think that the second sales person with 20 sales is the better of the two. However, you then find that she contacted 100 people to generate those 20 sales, while the first sales person contacted 20 people to get their 10 sales.

The sales person with the 50% conversion rate is by far the better sales person. Indeed, the first sales person, with the 10% conversion rate may well be a liability. It would be much more productive to give her leads to your good sales person. This is the way to think about your own leads.

Plan how you will manage each batch of leads and set your targets in terms of conversion rates. Set a target of -

• How many leads you will convert to contacts
• How many contacts you will convert to clients

Managing your Sales Leads

To manage your leads effectively there is a useful model called the Sales Cycle. This gives us the stages from lead to advocate.

1. Leads
2. Contacts – we make contact with the decision maker, perhaps on a telephone call or casual meeting
3. First Contact Meeting – our first sales presentation meeting, where we build rapport, establish needs, present our offering and, hopefully, close a sale
4. Active Prospect – we have met, and the prospect may buy, but hasn’t made the decision yet
5. Client – the client buys from us
6. Advocate – the client is so pleased they recommend us to others

The idea is to work at each phase to improve our conversion rate and effectiveness at sales. The more leads we convert to contacts, the bigger the pool we have for the next phase. Work conversion rates for each phase of the cycle.

Improving your Conversion Rates

We improve our conversion rate at each phase of the Sales Cycle by using skills, recording and tracking systems, and good motivational techniques. Above all, every good sales person plans HOW they will improve each week and each month. As well as managing the normal weekly activities, they focus on an improvement area so that they are constantly increasing their potential.

For example, you could concentrate one week on improving the first phase of the Sales Cycle, generating more contacts from your leads. Isolate a time for making appointments. Prepare a list of contact names and telephone numbers, and anything else you will need to carry out an effective period of calling. Set a target of number of dials, or number of contacts or number of appointments made. Work out how you will motivate yourself to keep going till you achieve your target. After the batch of calls, review your performance, and use this review to plan your next session.

Spend the next week focusing on improving your recording and tracking system, with the target improving the conversion from your Active File to Clients. A good sales professional is always working at his or her role and is always working at improving.

Congratulations! You have made the transition from being a sales rep – the feet on the street so to speak – to opening an office on your own. You are now an Independent Sales Office (ISO). Priority #1 is the evaluation and selection of the company you are going to partner with and represent and how they can help you grow your business.

This is no more evident than in the credit card processing industry. As a leading credit card processor, we see firsthand that the landscape for ISOs is constantly changing. Unfortunately, many ISO’s now find themselves in financially difficult times. Why? Because they either a) didn’t take the time to research their partner provider; and b) may simply not have known the right questions to ask. After all, picking the right partner is critical to your present and future success.

With this in mind, we are authoring and posting a series of articles on what to look for in an ISO provider in this industry. Following are questions pertaining to the sales, marketing and informational support that should be considered.

Key “Support” Questions when researching ISO provider partners:

· Comprehensive On-Demand Agent Portal

One of the most essential things to look for when selecting a provider is the information portal ISOs like yourself can access anytime online that contains all the information you need on a daily basis. Many providers today have nothing more than a simple database with minimal information.

To optimize your sales efforts, you need a partner who offers a comprehensive on-demand agent portal. For example, we provide our ISOs and direct sales reps with access to a proprietary ISO Agent portal where you can:

- Schedule daily appointments

- Track and manage submitted deals from stage 1 to activation

- Review commission breakdown in detail

- Access all training material / documents

- Receive a detailed breakdown of residual report

- Keep track of sales reps performance from month to month

Much more than a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, the ideal agent portal should also be able to:

- Submit merchant applications online to expedite customers through the approval process

- Provide batch reporting on a daily basis

- Flag alerts to customer service issues

· Marketing

When it comes to marketing, first and foremost is the quality and key focus of your prospective partner’s website. After all, this is generally the first place prospective customers go to. Is it a) professional and b) most importantly, is it merchant facing? Too many times, these sites can be geared more for ISO recruitment than new business lead generation. And obviously, lead generation is priority #1.

Other questions regarding marketing to consider: Do they provide you with compelling collateral that helps you communicate the benefits of your organization to your customers and prospects? Is this information downloadable in easily printable PDF format on their website to you? Can print and go when you need it? Do they supply pitch books which help you tell the story in a consistent, easy-to-follow layout? And, are the materials they do provide updated in an expeditious manner or are they using statistics from 1995?

· Training

Training is another key area for your success. Do they help train YOUR staff to grow and position you for future growth? How often is the training – daily, weekly, monthly, never? Let’s face it, having training sessions available on a daily basis, and not just once a month, makes for a most knowledgeable, more successful ISO. In addition, try to uncover the quality of the training and the credentials of the trainer? Do they have a dedicated full professional trainer on staff that has successfully trained thousands of ISOs and sales reps or are sessions conducted by an employee who does that it on his spare time?

If you can do you due diligence, follow the above guidelines regarding sales and marketing support, you should be able to gather enough information to pinpoint the right partner to work with you and help grow your business in these key areas. Please refer to other articles in this series where compensation and other significant areas are explored.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Evan Schweitzer (CPA) is the Chief Financial Officer for Federated Payments. Evan has spent the last 20 years aiding the growth of mid-sized companies and taking them to the next level. He is an expert in all things financial and works with the management team, ISO’s, and sales representatives to focus their efforts of profitable strategic growth initiatives. Prior to joining Federated Payments, Evan worked for Lipman Electronic Engineering (now VeriFone) and its global affiliates as Chief Financial Officer.

Federated Payments is a premier provider of credit card processing solutions and related merchant account services for small to medium size businesses within the U.S. and Canada. Federated takes a consultative approach in developing long-standing relationships with our merchant customers, Independent Sales Offices and Cash Advance Partners enhancing the way they do business. Federated offers a diverse suite of cost-effective solutions that include credit and debit card processing, equipment leasing, gift and loyalty card programs, cash advances and check approval services as well as its industry-leading Agent Partner Portal.

What is the biggest challenge facing channel marketing Director’s today? Anecdotal feedback from many indicates that it is the reluctance of channel partners to engage in co-marketing campaigns with them, despite substantial MDF funds being on offer.

This article examines some of the key reasons why partners are reluctant to engage in co-marketing campaigns, and what the technology vendors can do to reduce these obstacles.

Objection 1: “We have already committed our marketing budget for the quarter or year”.

This comes down to a lack of planning on the part of the Vendor’s channel team. Most company’s financial year is calendar, so every October and November the Vendor’s channel team should be working with key partners on their joint marketing calendar, including budgets, for the following year.

Events and campaigns should be mapped out, using the Vendors marketing calendar as the basis. Good overlap opportunities for co-marketing events and campaigns should be identified, and nailed down. The entire year’s co-marketing plans will therefore be mapped out before the year gets underway.

Channel marketing teams should remember that they are competing with other Vendor’s for their partners time, resources and budget. The partner only has so many resources to share between IBM, HP and Oracle for example, and the early bird will catch the most worms.

Objection 2: “We just don’t have the time and resources”.

Many Vendors don’t understand how much pressure the smaller partners in particular are under. They have to make a profit every quarter, and have a very limited marketing team, if any. They need to focus on making sales – now. Marketing campaigns need to be simple to prepare, launch and manage.

“Campaigns in a Box” are a great way to get partners marketing joint solutions professionally and efficiently. However, this is only part of the solution. The Vendor has to make it easy for the partner to customise, launch, report and claim back funds on the campaign. Often, the solution is to bring in a third party agency that can hand-hold the partner through all of this, and take over much of the administration.

Objection 3: “The minimum project size is too large.”

Some smaller partners find it difficult to even get on the ladder with co-marketing campaigns. While the Vendor may think that a €10,000 investment is nothing, the partner has to consider that they need four campaigns a year with each of their three strategic vendors. At €10,000 per campaign, this is a €120,000 investment. Depending on the margins, expected sales, and size of company, this simply may not be feasible.

Vendors need to offer a range of campaigns to partners, with the minimum investment closer to €2,000. This means that multiple marketing tactics must be on offer, to scale with the investment available.

Objection 4: “We don’t get enough support from the Vendor”

Part of this can be explained by the fact that many of the Vendor’s channel management teams are currently over stretched. During the downturn caused by the credit crises, channel marketing teams have been decimated at many of the large technology Vendors.

Many of the Vendors are now turning to specialise third party channel marketing agencies to provide either strategic or ad-hoc support to their channel teams, and also directly to partners. Support ranges from marketing workshops with partners, aimed at making the most of co-marketing campaigns, to administrative support, demand generation and lead management.

Objection 5: “The amount of co-funding is too small / other Vendors co-marketing offers are better, or better funded.”

There is a wide divergence in both the quality of co-marketing campaigns and level of market development funds available from the different Vendors. Some vendors offer 75% funding on co-marketing campaigns, while others offer zero.

Policy is policy, and there is not much channel marketing managers and directors can do about funding levels if the company policy is limited or no co-funding. However, they can increase the quality and support of campaigns. Free marketing workshops, free lead management, free drip-marketing and higher quality leads can all be provided by specialist third party agencies, and all improve the quality of experience and ROI for the partner.

Objection 6: “The Vendors drive peak-and-trough marketing.”

In the ITC sectors, many solutions have a six to eighteen month sales cycle (at least). Partners can become overwhelmed with the volume of leads from once-off campaigns that quickly generate lots of leads, and then no leads at all until next year. Partners simply do not have the resources to handle the peak, and do not have professional lead management and “drip-marketing” systems to nurture longer term opportunities over time.

Vendors need to take a longer-term view on co-marketing campaigns. The objective should be to provide partners with a steady stream of qualified opportunities, with quantities matched to partner resources. The Vendor, either directly or using a third party agency, should also provide lead management and nurturing support so that return-on-investment is maximised through closed sales from both near-term and long-term sales opportunities.

Michael Kelly is co-founder and Managing Director of TSL Marketing, a specialist IT Channel Marketing agency. Founded in 1999 and employing more than 150 staff worldwide, TSL provides global and local support to ITC Vendors and their channel partners. The company provides demand generation, marketing consulting, lead management and partner engagement services through a network of offices and partners worldwide.

Why do people choose a sales career? Some non-sales people reply “because they can’t do anything else.”

The most common answer from sales people is “the money.” Most professions require years of study just to earn the title, Architect, Chartered Accountant, Civil Engineer, Solicitor, Barrister or Doctor. Once qualified these professionals still have to build their experience and reputation before they can command the high remuneration associated with their occupation.

Sales people have no such barriers to entry yet those who succeed often earn similar incomes. Some can favourably compare their pay with top Barristers. Earnings in excess of 250,000 pounds sterling are not uncommon in fast growing industries.

Why do sales people get paid so much? Presumably, because companies find that sales people generate business more efficiently than other means. Most employers reward sales success with commission payments because it works. Do the commission earners deserve it?

Sales people, on average, support the jobs of 27 other people, according to one study. If you take into account those working for suppliers, this statistic holds some credibility. It’s not suggesting sales professionals could do their jobs without those 27 people, just that if their sales weren’t made, the jobs couldn’t exist.

Commission plans invariably attract criticism, from both those who benefit and those who don’t. Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business extols the wisdom of not tampering with pay systems. On the whole this is sound advice. In the case of commission plans, it is seldom possible to follow.

Most schemes are initially based on simple principles, and then suffer continuous modification, as circumstance change or unwanted side effects are discovered. Hurried or ill-considered plans need more changes.

Let’s consider the options from a management perspective. Commission based motivation gives sales people what they want – a sense of control over their own destiny and non-judgmental performance feedback. Should we be surprised when they act in accordance with their compensation plan and personal needs, rather than in response to management directives?

Changing strategic objectives prompt changes to commission schemes. Instructing sales people to focus on services has little effect if most of their income depends on product sales. Quick fixes in the form of special incentive payments can make the situation worse, as they did at one company I worked for.

The extra incentives intended to increase sales force attention on low-end high volume products, pushed payroll costs over budget, without having the desired effect.

Many variables effect sales behaviour and motivation. The mix of base salary and performance pay, the measurement period, when commission is paid, the method of measurement, accelerators, how high the ‘on target’ bar is set, and capping all play a part. Inconsistent levels of payment for different products and services ads a further layer of complexity. Commission plan design warrants a great deal more attention than it usually gets.

Mix of base salary to performance pay

Attention swings towards winning immediate business as the ratio of commission to salary increases. Aggressive accelerators accentuate the urgency of meeting or exceeding every sales target. Just like water, sales people motivated this way will always find the quickest root down the hill. Opportunity for gain concentrates the mind. Longer-term considerations such as new market development, and even new products, may be ignored unless they generate clear upside earning potential. Advocating team behaviour under these circumstances is like trying to push water up hill.

High base salaries with small commission elements encourage long-term focus and good corporate citizen behaviour. Relationships and reputation are better maintained. Strategic sales opportunities receive more attention. In my first sales position bonus payments based on company performance and individual salary provided team oriented motivation. Sales people were more inclined to visit customers who had no immediate business to place. In larger companies, this approach can direct focus away from profit and revenue milestones towards being seen to do the right thing.

The measurement period

Orders tend to bunch up at the end of measurement periods. Sales people naturally focus on the business at hand and neglect prospecting. Pressure to close business in time for measurement period end dates, pushes pipeline work into second place. Countering this with monthly or weekly sales targets leads to lower value orders as sales people increasingly attend to opportunities with shorter sales cycles.

Quarterly, half-yearly or annual measurement periods tend to result in long famines and larger orders. Activity targets, that are designed to improve order flow, but are left subordinate to the compensation plan, are largely ignored or receive lip service. Attaching payments to activity targets may encourage manipulation.

When they get their commission

Paying commission against orders causes sales people to move quickly on to their next opportunity and reduces their interest in delivery and implementation.

Deferring payment until the customer pays disconnects sales success from the reward, devaluing the commission scheme. With some schemes, sales people may not receive the commission associated with a sale for six months or more.

In my early days at Sun Microsystems, many of us spent a disproportionate amount of time checking indecipherable commission statements and querying pay cheques. We also became involved in the collection of debts.

As you might expect, such circumstances work against the purpose of commission plans. Happily, for the sales force, and for Sun, the scheme was improved.

The measurement method

Basing ‘performance pay’ on profit steers sales people to sell whatever products or services have the highest margin, regardless of management intent. For resellers and distributors this has the advantage of providing automatic feedback of market preferences and opportunities. It also helps control cost of sales.

For larger companies it frustrates marketing strategy. Paying commission on revenue reduces interest in the price paid and helps the pursuit of market share and strategic customers. On the down side, profit margins become more difficult to control.

Accelerators

Changing the value of commission according to performance spurs sales people on to greater effort when the effected number is perceived to be in reach or achieved. This may result in more price pressure from the sales person, so that he or she can buy business forward.

Accelerators can also encourage sandbagging. If a sales person thinks the target associated with the accelerated commission rate is out of reach, he or she is likely to sandbag to preserve orders for the next measurement period. Overall accelerators increase motivation, sales, and earnings. Accelerators are difficult to budget for If more than the expected proportion of a sales team achieve accelerated commission.

Clear goals, careful consideration, consultation, and testing are essential for designing all but the simplest commission schemes.

If the task falls to you, adopt a cynical mood and imagine you are a recipient. Think through how the planned scheme or changes will effect your earnings and actions. Ask peers to do the same. Get some of your sales people to give you feedback. Ask your accountant or financial director to pick holes in envisioned schemes before they are published.

Repairing mistakes after a compensation plan is issued is almost always expensive. Sales people will have made target commitments based on the published compensation plan. If adjustments could mean less money, they will have a de-motivating effect.

Effort invested in planning pays dividends in sales results and reduced need for management intervention. Whenever sales compensation needs revision, remember the 1 – 10 – 100 rule. Right first time costs once. Right second time costs ten times. Right third time costs one hundred times.

No matter the industry, the ultimate goal of any business is to build their profit margin. In business today, there are a plethora of tools that are available to streamline office management and enhance your bottom line. Marketing tools, sales tracking, and database management systems exist for the sole purpose of allowing your business to understand what processes are working, and which are not.

Customer Relationship Management, CRM, systems offer a combination of marketing, sales tracking and database management in one streamlined solution for your business, but how do you know if a CRM system would benefit your company? The following criteria fit every CRM customer:

* Does your business use any form of marketing tools to let clients know about your products, services, news, or enhancements? Any business that uses marketing tools, whether they be online or print, would benefit from the implementation of a CRM system. Using the powerful sales reporting systems available with CRM, they can better assess the behavior and goals of their target market, and adjust their marketing tactics to match.This type of targeted marketing shows much higher returns and is much more cost effective than randomly throwing marketing materials based on a bulk mailing list. Your potential clients will appreciate your researched approach and the money you save on marketing enhances your profit margin.
* Do you operate with a sales team that handles your leads? A CRM customer’s sales team has the advantage of real-time reports and customer behavior tracking, arming them with the in-depth information they need to bring a more personal touch to their sales pitch.
* Continuing this personal touch theme, a CRM system will allow your sales team to easily access and transfer specific customer details from phone numbers, birthdays, anniversaries, or any other little tidbit of information that comes up in a conversation that will enhance the customer-salesman relationship and allot your company a better chance of continued business with that client. Many times, clients are lost due to miscommunication or frustration due to misinformation. A CRM customer will rarely fall prey to this loss due to the cumulative, accessible and real-time reports and content that is available to their sales team at any time.
* If your business uses quotes and invoices for your clients, then your bottom line will benefit from the integrated invoicing, quote tracking system available in most CRM solutions. Not only does using an integrated solution save your staff time when attempting to get a full perspective on any given client’s account, but you will save money by using one solution to handle all your customer sales needs. Your business will run more efficiently and with each day of increased productivity, your bottom line will rise.

KarmaCRM is a web based CRM application that provides you with a simple way to streamline all of your sales contacts and tasks. It aims to keep your daily sales routine simple yet provides powerful functionality at the same time. Click on the link above to sign up for a free account.

Salespeople love having their performance measured; Yeah Right!

Sales people love submitting sales reports. Right on!

Is your sales process measurement a reward system or a punishment system?

The number one motivator for salespeople is making a sale. Just look at their faces when they walk into your office waving an order or a cheque. They are on a real high at that moment. Then they go on to the next prospect and get a knock-back, then another. The spark dies and the target starts to look unachievable. Turning up to next sales meeting to discuss results starts to look like volunteering for a flagellation session.

So the question is “Does your sales measurement system help your people make more sales?”

The answer depends on whether you are measuring results, the number or value of the orders won, or whether you are measuring achievement of milestones on the path to the sale.

The critical issue here is the realization that as a sales manager you cannot manage the result. What you can manage is the activity that produces the result. If your people are doing enough of the right things, and doing them well, they will achieve the result. The only way you can manage the result then is to make all the sales yourself.

If you measure progress along the path to the sale, best done at the critical milestones, then you are in a good place when it comes to guiding a salesperson.

An example may help.

One of your salespeople has had a busy week making calls on qualified prospects, and has generated a backlog of requests for quotation. There is not a single sale in his sales report. He is way behind on the quotes, and you know from experience that if they don’t go out in two or three days the prospects will cool off. He needs guidance from you.

You have a choice of actions.

1. Tell him to stop everything and get the all the quotes out.

2. Tell him he has had a great week. Well done and stick at it.

3. Ask him why he has not made a sale.

4. Show him how to balance up his sales activity so he moves every prospect along the path to the sale at the desired pace. Help him to prioritise his prospects to get the quotes out progressively.

Set out like this, the answer is obvious, but it is time to be honest. What did you do the last time this happened? What is the likely response to these options?

Answer 1 This ensures that he runs out of steam in a week or two, and wonders what has gone wrong.

Answer 2 He cannot make a sale until he quotes.

Answer 3 This focus on the end result is a certain de-motivator.

Answer 4 This is the way to guide him to steady progress and a steady flow of orders.

What you need, to be able to do this, is a system that gives you a sales report on the activity of your sales people and the status of every prospect in the pipeline. Then you can guide them to the activity that will lead to a steady flow of orders. Your sales meeting will become motivational working sessions, rather than de-motivational exhortations to work harder to reach sales targets. Your people will become internally motivated by the certainty of success and their confidence will grow.

If your sales reporting system lists every sales prospect, and the latest milestone in the sales process that has been achieved, you have made a start. If your system assigns a probability value to the present status of each prospect, based on the established relationship between the milestone and the probability of banking the payment, you are way ahead. If your system calculates the expected future value of all the prospects in the pipeline, you know whether they have been working effectively by the change in the expected value, and what they have to do to increase it.

This approach to reporting sales activity and value gets you real information that is hard to fudge. Many sales managers treat sales reports as an advanced form of cheat sheets, with the main question being “How long before the boss finds out?” With a focus on measurable milestones, there is nowhere to hide; either the quote has gone out or it has not. With the probability of success assigned by the system, the guesswork about the quality of the prospect’s relationship with your business is taken out of the equation. The reliability of the information you receive from your team will skyrocket.

You will transform your relationship with your salespeople from boss to coach. Your sales will be easier to forecast because you have removed the peaks and troughs. Life will be so much more satisfying.

Have you been scratching your head wondering why your sales team is not hitting revenue goals? Do you feel like you’re doing everything you can and giving it your all a manager but are not getting consistent results? Read on to determine if you are a product of these 7 reasons sales managers fail:

1. Inability to Transfer Skills

Sales managers often move into a sales management role because of their ability to identify and win business. Unfortunately, your great selling skills are of no use or value to the organization if you can’t transfer these selling skills to your team.

In the words of Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, “When you take on a leadership role, it’s no longer about you, it’s about them.” In other words, it doesn’t matter how good you are, it only matters how good you can make the individuals on your sales team.

2. White House Syndrome

It’s easy for sales managers to catch this disease and lose touch with reality. (How much is a carton of milk?) Sales managers start camping out in the “white house” (the corporate office), getting caught up in the minutia of reports, meetings and firefighting. They forget the real reason they were hired as a sales manager: to train and coach their sales team to the highest level of performance. This isn’t accomplished in the “white house.”

Training and coaching are accomplished by riding with your sales team and calling on the real world – your prospects and clients. The cushy chair in corporate is more comfortable; the car seat is always more profitable.

3. Field manager, Corporate Manager, All-Around Manager

In my former corporate world, I had seven sales managers reporting to me and quickly figured out there were three types: field manager, corporate manager and all-around manager.

Field managers stand staunchly by their team, defend all actions and refuse to understand or endorse corporate objectives. The corporate manager is interested only in moving up the corporate ladder, leaving their sales team without a voice in the corporation. The all-around manager gets it. They achieve the hard balance of presenting the sales team’s issues to senior management while communicating and enforcing corporate objectives to their sales team.

The field manager enjoys a lot of love and limited growth, the corporate manager builds a sales culture of distrust, and the all-around manager grows leaders, profits and companies.

4. No Tough Love

When you accept the role of sales manager, you accept the responsibility of growing people as well as profits. A great sales manager is similar to a great parent. Good parents set expectations of behavior and character for their children, and hold their kids accountable to those expectations. They understand they’re not in a popularity contest and refuse to accept excuses or cave in to comments such as, “none of the other kids’ moms expect them to…..”

Great sales managers set clear expectations for their sales team and don’t cave when the sales team pushes back on standards of excellence. They put aside their need to be liked for the need to be respected. They understand that tough love creates high-performance sales cultures.

5. No Duplicable Sales Process

The example I use is of an athletic coach and their playbook. An NFL coach always has a playbook and requires each player to study, learn and execute the plays.

The professional football player isn’t allowed to run their own playbook, regardless of the number of years they’ve been playing ball. Sales managers, on the other hand, often lack a playbook and give the excuse, “Well, I hire people with sales experience.” The result is a sales manager trying to manage 20 different playbooks filled with old and ineffective plays.

6. Lack of Prospecting

Sales managers must prospect; however, the target changes. Instead of prospecting for business, sales managers must be consistently prospecting for top sales talent. A mistake often made by sales managers is looking for top talent in crisis mode, after someone on their team has been fired, resigns or moves.

The pressure of hitting a sales quota results in sales managers settling for a second-best candidate and expecting first-rate sales results. Great sales managers prospect monthly for top talent to keep their people pipeline full.

7. Sales Team is Stroke-Deprived and Fun-Deprived

High-driving types often land in the position of sales manager because of their ability to achieve goals. They don’t need a lot of strokes and are very results-oriented. The problem is that high-driving sales managers are managing salespeople who have a high need for recognition, interaction and fun.

The unsuccessful sales manager doesn’t realize their new sales activity plan includes giving strokes and pats on the back, creating recognition programs and setting up events to hit the fun quota.

Good Selling!

Colleen Stanley is the founder and president of SalesLeadership, Inc. She is a monthly columnist for national Business Journals, author of ‘Growing Great Sales Teams’ and co-author of ‘Motivational Selling.’ Prior to starting SalesLeadership, Colleen was vice president of sales and marketing for Varsity Spirit Corporation. During her 10 years at Varsity, sales increased from 8M to 90M.

She is the creator of the EI Selling System™, a unique and powerful sales program that integrates emotional intelligence skills with consultative sales skills. Training and consulting services offered are:
• Benchmarking, Selection and Hiring of Top Sales Talent
• Consultative Sales Training
• Leadership Training for Sales Managers
• Major Account Sales
• Prospecting and Referral Training
• Sales Compensation
• Territory Management
• Customer Relationship Management

http://www.salesleadershipdevelopment.com, or become a fan at http://www.facebook.com/SalesLeadership.

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