We haven’t had good luck building up sales by turning things over to salespeople. We give them leads they don’t turn into business. Later on, we find they didn’t follow up on the leads. Or they followed up but couldn’t turn it into a sale. Not sure how to better manage this.
Thoughts of the day: Building up sales managing both salespeople and sales activities. Have the right people in the right place doing the right job. Save time and effort. Profile who you’re selling to. Get salespeople involved in the effort so that they place greater value on the leads. Check out the ROI on sales activities.
Beyond people and process
Before building up sales, before hiring, know what’s going on in sales. Track new entries in the system, attempts to connect, people contacted, and conversions from one stage of sales to the next. You don’t want to find out down the road that time was lost and money was wasted because sales efforts weren’t focused enough or were insufficient to get the job done.
Clear space in your calendar to analyze, coach, and direct to ensure things are on track in sales. Follow-up should be organized and systematic; set goals and benchmark performance based on those. Be sure to stay on top of all the new sales activities.
A good sales team is crucial; not all salespeople are good at all parts of the sales process. Some can open doors, others are good at conveying information and some can elicit action. Success in sales is all about getting the right people in the right positions at the right time.
Building up sales
It’s better to split the job of selling into parts. Hire salespeople who can work together and complement each other. Avoid one solution fits all, where your salesperson does a part of sales well but misses the boat on the others. Hold all salespeople accountable for delivering on their piece of the sales funnel.
First, you have to open doors. Qualified lists save time; weed out leads who are unlikely to show interest. Hire someone who can make a lot of phone calls and who can make an impact when they get through. Ask that person to break down doors, gather and convey information. In this stage expect relentless discipline at dialing the phone constantly.
Next, comes each prospect doing an evaluation. Is this useful? Why your company? Why now? Given all the other demands on your prospect’s time and resources, getting them to actively engage is about building trust, creating urgency, and gaining commitment. Get salespeople who are comfortable challenging the status quo as they get people to follow their lead.
Invest in strategies
When it comes to building up sales activity, remember that most people value what they have to work for to achieve. The same is true for lead generation. Handing out leads as if they were no big deal to get and you’ll likely find that salespeople don’t value them. Having to figure out which prospects to go after, salespeople get more engaged with each one that has merit and is more inclined to keep working the lead.
Figure out the conversion rate on each stage of the sales funnel. The layout on paper the amount needed at each stage to generate one sale. Now multiply that by the number of total sales needed. Decide how much activity each salesperson can deliver, figure out how many salespeople you need, and work out the cost of the whole sales team. Compare the cost to output.
You want to get your sales costs under 30 percent of gross profit, even better if you can get it under 20 percent. Keep figuring out how to reduce effort and increase output until you can get the results you want.
“The Sales Development Playbook: Build Repeatable Pipeline and Accelerate Growth with Inside Sales” by Trish Bertuzzi.
