Here’s a big question for sales leaders: How do you transfer the level of success that one team in your organization is delivering...so that everyone else on the sales side can find a way to deliver at the same level?
And here’s another big question: How do you increase the odds that salespeople you’ve just hired ramp up to the production level of your very best performers?
Each of these big questions point you toward the challenge of scaling. While that’s a complex topic that someone could write a book about (actually, come to think of it, someone has), there are some simple steps you can take right now to scale your team’s performance. Take a look.
Step One: Standardize the sales process.
Is your sales process written down? Is it a frequent point of reference? Does everyone on the team know what the process looks like? Specifically, does everyone know what all the key benchmarks for which they are responsible are – such as securing a scheduled next step, or discussing the budget before making a presentation? In our experience, teams that have difficulty scaling also have difficulty with standardizing the sales process. That doesn’t mean you handcuff your team. It means you break down the most important, non-negotiable steps, and you support people as they learn to drive on the correct side of the guardrails.
Step Two: Create and circulate a list of the top 10 behaviors all members of the team must execute.
These are the measurable behaviors that must consistently be performed on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. These behaviors must be executed with unconditional commitment. During coaching sessions, your people must come to understand and accept the importance of turning these behaviors into specific measurable goals. Goals without plans are daydreams! If you don’t have such a list yet, here is one you can adapt.
- Lead generation: Prospecting, the number one behavior that drives all the others.
- Building relationships: Establishing a strong, open relationship based on trust.
- Qualifying opportunity: Determining a reason to do business.
- Making presentations: Presenting solutions to the prospect’s problems.
- Servicing customers: Delivering superior customer satisfaction.
- Account management: Maximizing business in each account.
- Territory development: Building a strategy to grow the territory.
- Building a cookbook for success: Establishing a personalized behavior plan that supports productive sales activity.
- Continuous education: Developing ongoing product, market, and sales knowledge.
- Execution of the sales process: Mastering the act of leading decision-makers through the steps by which the team sells.
Step Three: Identify the top 5 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure success.
Base these on the list of behaviors. When you have your one-on-one coaching sessions with your people, you want to be able to sit down with them and discuss the countable outcomes that connect to the top five KPIs you’re both monitoring. Read from the same sheet music! Evaluate the metrics so you can each know with certainty where they’re hitting the mark – and where they're going off track and need some support.
Invest some time in this today. Take these three steps. They are the first, and most essential, steps to building and supporting a scalable sales team.
Dave Fischer, President, Chartwell Seventeen Advisory Group
Sandler Training NYC
