5 top tips for creating a healthy sales culture in your organisation.
According to the CSO insights in 2018 – 43% of organisations still do not have a formal sales methodology and over 80% don’t measure the effectiveness of their Sales methodology.
In today’s climate where there is uncertainty how the economy will react to Brexit it’s essential that all organisations take a long hard look at their sales process and how they monitor adherence and effectiveness of them
FAB Solutions, have 5 top tips for organisations that may be struggling with this, not everyone can afford to hire consultants to help shape this but working up a robust sales framework and monitoring process needs to be front and centre for all organisations wanting to grow or optimise, spending a little may give you a bigger return then you think, her we look at top tips for creating a sales framework and making sure it embeds.
1. Monitor your top performers
You may not have a formal sales structure in place and according to the CSO insights only 37% of organisation do have something that is adopted and expected to be use, key word here “expected” to be used.
Agents that are at the top of their game will be evidencing some of the core skills that will shape your sales structure so tip number 1 is to analyse their calls,
- How do they prepare in advance of the sale?
- How do they flow information to the customer?
- What types of questions are they asking?
- How do they present their product?
- How do they close the business?
The process is important but the words and the script is of equal importance include in this any offline work such as e-mails, quote templates, proposal documents and really get forensic about how they achieve the results that they deliver, this then becomes a replicable process that you can base your sales training on which take me to the next point.
2. Create the license to Sell
Your onboarding of new people should most definitely include a formal process where you upskill them on your “sales process.” This is exactly what you expect your people to be working towards when handling your customers and if you have done a good job at point 1 it will be the sales process that drives you the highest levels of success.
Training your people on the process isn’t enough though, how do you know it’s been embedded and that they understand what it is that you have trained them in, most people have different learning styles so will need time to reflect or practice and repeat until they have become comfortable, for some of your people this will not be natural so you will have to give them time to practice and some may take longer than others and for some they might not make the transition, this is something you will have to tackle later down the line but for now your absolute minimal should be to certify them and almost create a formal accreditation which licenses them to sell.
Typically this accreditation can be a role play with observations from your sales managers or sales training teams and it should be followed up with further sign off in the live environment, this does however mean you have to take your managers on the journey with you, don’t overlook the need to train your managers on the same sales process, some of them won’t have sold in their life and the most definitely won’t have been prepared for the change to a sales leader over a manager so this brings us onto the next tip.
3. Create Sales Leaders over managers
Your managers are at the front end of your business and have an incredible amount of responsibility, a good manager can inspire, motivate and drive high performance but they all need investment so managers need taking through two levels to ensure you make the shift that you need in your sales organisation.
Sales managers should understand your sales process just as much as your sales people so it’s important to give them the same training you would your sales agents as they need this in order to support your teams, but in advance of this your sales managers should be doing the following actions
- Obtaining sales forecast from their teams
- Managing the pipeline of your teams
- Motivating and inspiring the sales teams to keep them on track for targets
This requires two levels of training for your managers one training on the process but secondly they need to be taught how to a sales leader, how to really get under the skin of what makes a good prospect, how to qualify a customer correctly, how to support their teams to accurately forecast, and importantly how to keep them motivated if they are off track or having a bad sales day.
Equip your managers to become sales leaders and help them make that shift from manging a process to leading the team and setting goals and objections to help you smash your performance goals. Which brings us on to the next tip.
4. What gets measured gets managed
This is a phrase often used in business and it’s, exactly, the same in any sales methodology.
It’s not just enough to measure the result, you need to be really clear on the activity and the metrics that you need to deliver that result and this needs to be clearly laid out in your training programme, your sign off materials and your teams 121 accountabilities.
Usually this can be successfully achieved by creating a balance score card and weighting the most important metrics accordingly. Whichever way it’s done it should be visible to all and everyone should own the whole. If your sales agents are clear on what’s expected of them your sales leaders will be clear and confident enough to challenge when performance is not where it needs to be, empower your sales leaders so they can focus their efforts on what needs to be developed with your team to get maximum performance and what they need to coach for effective performance, which brings us to the final tip.
5. Create an effective and structured coaching culture
Studies have shown that sales agents who receive more coaching are more likely to achieve their targets then those that haven’t, furthermore organisations that have a very clearly mapped out structure to their sales coaching will drive further improvements in agent performance
It’s incredibly Important as in points 3 and 4 that you equip your sales leaders on the process that you expect them to follow and give them the tools to be able to have both great coaching conversations on how to maximise performance.
What is equally important is that you give your sales leaders the power to be able to have courageous conversations when performance is not where it needs to be, this may be a coaching conversation on aspects of the role that the sales person is struggling with through role observation but equally it may be that the sales person in your new sales process can no longer do what is expected of them and in spite of all training and coaching isn’t in the right role any more, this is a difficult conversation for any leader but you need to be prepared for it and supporting your leaders in advance with effective communication and good coaching discussions.
To summarise, FAB Solutions are specialist in creating Sales structures, training and developing leadership to move your business to the next level, to see how we can help you visit our website www.fabsolutions.co.uk, also check out our blogs on getting ROI from your sales training and other useful topics.
