The Sales Director said to my management class "As regards my salespeople, they know what they need to be doing every day"
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That in itself is an impressive claim. All his team know what is expected of them every day. How many small businesses or even larger businesses cannot make that statement? Those businesses rely on their people doing the right thing and they listen to all the excuses as to why business is not coming through as if those were reasonable and even expected reasons. In contrast to that scenario my client got more specific. He backed up his claim:
“If I work it from all the way from cold calling to closing a deal, if you're doing enough dials and you aren't connecting enough, data is the problem, right?
Who are you phoning? If they are answering, but you're not converting, it could still mean data, slightly, you know, that it’s the wrong persona, but it would mostly be about training on what conversations you’re having.
And then if they are having those conversations, but those aren’t turning into opportunities, that is to say pipelined opportunities, how are they progressing that first level?
During their probation I need to see X amount of dials, X amount of meetings booked, X amount of this, and all of them actually contribute to each other.
So if they haven’t met the final metric, I go back and ask if they are having enough meetings, or what happened on those meetings?
And then we end up agreeing a plan to see how we can convert them better.”
When I pointed out that few companies have this level of data he looked visibly shocked. How could he hold his team and his individual salespeople accountable if the data was not available? How could he coach properly? How could he know what training was required? How could he know if the data was at fault? How could he know if the problem was at an industry or economy level?
He would be guessing in the dark.
And that, guessing in the dark, unfortunately, is how most sales operations are run.
Imagine now what he is able to do with Sandler. He can now pinpoint where things can be improved at each stage of the conversations. From the first cold call through to sealing the deal on the first piece of business.
His salespeople are already making huge strides. The only reason why they are seeing dramatic improvements, very fast, is because they have this level of discipline and work rhythm. There are still things to get right. For example, they are still spending too much time on internal conversations and not enough with those prospects who will definitely do business, but you can appreciate just how quickly they are going to ramp up.
I’m not telling you the name of the company, not even its industry, but just assume for a second it’s one of YOUR competitors. On the basis of what they are doing they are going to increase their marketshare. They will take your prospects (and even your clients) as their clients. Unless ,of course, you also have this level of data and this level of dedication to excellence.
