You Are The Pivotal Backbone Of A Great Company.
Schedule A Discovery Call NowDo you find yourself frustrated with your salespeople?
Or your sales manager?
Or yourself for letting it all happen?
Here's the problem.
Small business owners are typically good at creating stuff that the market needs.
A product.
A service.
It doesn't really matter, because there is a need.
Your company is probably pretty good at selling your stuff. And when the business was smaller, and life was less complex, that was enough.
But then, as things grew, the owner needed to get others to sell for them.
That's where things started to not work.
Now fast forward to today, many owners realize they have things like:
• Salespeople that are overpaid and under-performing.
• A sales team with a sense of entitlement.
• Sales managers that can't accurately predict what revenue will be coming into their pipeline
• Sales management that isn't coaching, motivating, holding accountable or upgrading the team they manage with newer, better salespeople like sports teams do.
And then, hovering over the owners head is the thought that:
"How will I ever get the multiple I want for the business if we don't improve sales?"
Sure, it's possible to cut costs for a while. Getting EBID, EBIDA, EBIDTA, (etc.) improved can be done, But at some point, for many it's fairly basic.
You know you need to improve top-line sales.
But what you’re are hearing are excuses like:
1. It's tough selling in today's commoditized world.
2. Our competition has better products and services.
3. We need to lower our price to get the business.
4. It's hard to get to buyers because of technology and voicemail.
And then, when most business owners look at what's actually happening, they are seeing things like:
1. Salespeople that are spending a lot of time and company resources responding to RFPs (or other less formal requests for proposals) with little to no chance of getting the business.
2. A sales pipeline full of unqualified prospects that never seem to come in.
3. Salespeople that are discounting price to get the business and seem to have a hard time selling at a premium.
4. A sales team that seems to call on the same accounts and aren't prospecting for new ones.
5. Sales management that is accepting mediocrity.
It's tough being a company owner.
Owners (who founded and developed cool things that the marketplace needs) have non-transferable skills when it comes to selling.
They’re pretty good at it, but they often have a hard time getting others to be as good as they are.
Do you wish there was a better way?
There is, but it isn't easy.
It requires looking in the mirror and having an honest conversation with yourself.
Not the distorted, fun house mirror that is masking sales problems.
But the real mirror. The reality that says: I have a sales problem and I need to fix it!
Many companies come to us because of our reputation in training. But, here’s the thing that people in this business won’t tell you.
Most sales training doesn't work.
While sometimes training may feel like a nice quick fix, it isn’t a magic bullet.
Don't get me wrong.
Training is critically important if it’s done in the right way for the right people. Unfortunately, it's almost never done in the right way.
(By the way, one-time seminars never work. You can't learn any skill of any value in a one-time training. You can't learn to sell. You can't learn to speak a foreign language. You can't learn to fly a plane. You can't learn to play golf. That's not the way humans learn, apply what they’ve learned, and build a skill.)
So, what should you be thinking about?
15 years ago, I developed the 4S Sales Improvement Process. A process for looking at ongoing growth and improvement in a sales team.
1.Strategies
2.Structure
3.Staff
4.Skills
Let’s start with Skills.
People call us all the time for sales training, but what they’re actually looking for is “skills training”. Areas that are typically things like:
• Prospecting
• Closing
• Shortening the selling cycle
• Overcoming price objections
• Getting to the right decision-maker.
These are all critically important skills for your salespeople to have.
But here is the problem
If you are dealing with Staff that aren’t trainable & coachable, your skills training won’t work.
The Sandler methodology has been around for 50 years and has been proven over and over again to work, but give me someone who is not trainable/coachable and there is no way your investment will pay off.
Not everyone is trainable or coachable!
Save yourself the headache.
Either accept them as non-trainable/non-coachable…or get rid of them.
(I think “Making them available to the marketplace” is the more politically correct term.😊)
Now you need to look at Staff.
The common problems that lead to being non-trainable/non-coachable are things like:
1. Salespeople in comfort zones.
2. Salespeople that are unmotivated.
3. Salespeople that aren't committed to excellence.
4. Salespeople that make excuses.
5. Salespeople with an entitlement mindset.
Ask yourself the question:
‘Do I have the right people?’
The people that got you to where you are, may not be the same people that get you to where you want to be (If where you want to be is a better place).
Now, staff may not be an issue if you’re salespeople aren’t settling for mediocrity. Let's say you have the right people, or at least some of the right people.
For many companies, it’s the area of Structure that often holds them back.
Challenges like:
1. A Lack of sales management processes:
• Coaching
• Accountability
• Pre-call process
• Role-playing practice.
• Debriefing.
2. Poor compensation plan
(The current plan is not producing the intended results).
3. Lack of hiring process for continually upgrading the sales team.
(All great teams have turnover by design, and are always looking for new and improved talent)
Which finally brings us to Strategies.
Challenges like:
1. Not having a clear definition of how much time and effort to allot to:
• Attaining new business..
• Keeping existing accounts.
• Expanding existing accounts.
• Recapturing past accounts that have left.
2. The idea of being the low-price leader vs selling value & commanding a premium.
3. Questions in being proactive or reactive with your sales approach.
Let’s say a company decides the Strategy is:
‘We want to increase new accounts by 25%’
You approach Skills and say, ‘what skills does the team need?’
1. Cold calling.
2. Using LinkedIn for better introductions.
3. How to set effective first appointments.
4. How to get to the real pains.
5. How to avoid unpaid consulting.
6. How to qualify a real opportunity.
7. How to sell value and uncover the real budget.
9. How to find out the true decision-making process.
10. How to get to multiple decision-makers.
11. How to not be commoditized
12. How to get them to switch suppliers/vendors.
But then you have to look at your Staff and ask
‘Can my current people bring in new accounts?’
You have to consider:
• Maybe they're great account managers but not great hunters.
• Maybe they're not hungry enough to do new business development.
• Maybe they don't have any interest in this.
• Maybe it's easier to find better hunters than trying to change our current people.
• They don't have the desire and commitment to follow through.
But, let's say we actually have good people who are trainable and coachable.
Then the gap could be in Structure.
• Do you have accountability systems – Very few salespeople will prospect without accountability because prospecting is tough.
• Do you have the right training and coaching reinforcement from sales managers?
• Do your sales managers role-play and observe through doing ride-alongs?
• Do you have the right compensation plan?
Think about your Strategies in sales, then back it up with an inventory of the Skills, Staff and Structure you need to accomplish those strategies.
In closing, I want to encourage you to take action. Using the 4S's as your simplified process as a start. Of course, we offer help in these areas, but you may want to do it all yourself. (Especially if you cut your own hair and bake your own bread😊).
If you do want to have a brief phone conversation about your situation, you can set up a 30-minute exploratory conversation with me through my executive assistant or the button below.
Both of our times are valuable, so to make our time most efficient, I will have a short, two-minute-to-complete, questionnaire sent to you on the 4Ss.
When you and I talk, we’ll just discuss the issues most relevant to you, because the overall purpose of our call would be for you to share with me your biggest concerns with your sales team and for me to get a better idea if we could possibly help you.
You and I may discover in our phone call that there is no potential for us working together and that's okay.
At least we figured that out.
We may, also, figure out there is a potential fit. In that case you and I would schedule a time for us to have a more in-depth conversation at a later time.
But in our call, let's agree to keep it to just the two of us speaking.
No sales managers.
No salespeople.
No HR.
That typically lessens the authenticity we can have in our dialogue.
If you'd like to talk, you can schedule a 30-minute time with my executive assistant:
Sully Kowalski | 847-513-6918
If you don’t want to talk, hopefully you'll find some value in the 4Ss I've shared with you.
Either way, I wish you well.
Jody Williamson
Founder & Managing Director
Sandler Training Chicago/Northbrook
Our Northbrook, IL Location
Our Chicago, IL Location