Posts tagged: Sales Leadership

Communitech Senior Sales Peer2Peer: Achieving High Performance in Sales

Posted on October 20, 2011

by Mark Elliott

As I mentioned in a recent blog post on Government funded suppor for startups in Ontario, Communitech is an excellent organization.  One of my favourite things about Communitech is the Peer2Peer groups; I am part of the Senior Sales and Business Development Peer2Peeer group.  This week we had a presentation on Achieving High Performance in Sales by Guest Speaker Craig McQueen from Ninety Five 5.  This blog will be some of the highlights from his presentation.

The basis of the presentation was focused on these 3 points:

  • Everything you need to be great at sales is learnable.
  • The means to help people become great has greatly improved.
  • We should incorporate this to improve

Craig also talked about how traditional sales training is not the solution for high performance sales.  It is like drinking from the firehouse for a period of time and then trying to remember and incorporate all of the learned knowledge into daily and weekly habits.  He talked about how the drip method was a lot better.

Craig talked about the 5 steps to master, broken down into the following:

  • Simplify
  • Practice
  • Apply
  • Confirm
  • Expand

There were some great points on what makes a great sales improvement system:

  • Simulate tough situations
  • Find a common coaching platform
  • Busy is the enemy of better, make some time for development

A large part of the conversation stated that people are not born to be in sales, just like they are not born to be a hockey player or doctor.  Craig had talked about the “Willingness to learn is the key to being a great sales person”.  He also indicated that anyone could become a sales achiever no matter what the personality.  This was the one main point that I did not agree with.

I really enjoyed the presentation and although I didn’t agree with all of the points that were brought up, I did take away many interesting points to think about.  I will be checking out some ways to add more ongoing sales education and situations.  One of the resources that I will explore is the Ninety Five 5 site and some of the information and tools.

For some tips from VA Partners sign-up for our whitepapers.

 

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Best Practices for B2B Sales Team Communication

Posted on August 30, 2011

by Mark Elliott

I have worked with and as part of many B2B sales teams over the last 15+ years.  I find one thing that has varied greatly over that time is how sales managers or company leaders interact with their sales rep.  While I don’t think there is always a one size that would fit all, I do think there are a number of specific components to a successful plan.

Formalized Individual meeting: This meeting would occur in fairly regular intervals.  In my experience, the best time frame would be once or twice a month.  I suggest that the agenda be fairly consistent.  My suggested agenda would include: review the sales reps goals, funnel, follow-up items from the last meeting, as well as frequently reviewing personal development goals.

Team meetings: I would suggest this occurring once or twice a month.  Getting different team members to lead sections rather than just the sales leader is the best format for these sessions. Every member of the sales teams has great information they can share about their experience with customers.  Frequently I would invite people from other company functional areas to share their experience and to share in the customer feedback.  These team meetings also provide excellent education opportunities.

Management by walking around: I find that most managers do this either too frequently or not frequently enough.  Heading out to the sales area and talking about what is going during or towards the end of the day is a good practice to determine the challenges and successes of the day that they can share.

Joint meetings/calls: Sales is an activity that goes on in real time.  There are many techniques and nuances that are best seen in action.  I would recommend regular joint calls with your sales team.  The sales leader should not lead the meeting but use it as an opportunity to learn and help with development. The same process can be done with inside sales reps as well by listening to calls and setting up some time to review after.

Don’t forget about remote reps: Remote reps can still be interacted into the sales communication process by using telephone calls, conference calls, webinars, and tools like Skype.  The sales leader should also make an effort to visit the sales rep territory and spend some face to face time.  Switch it up and bring the rep into head office a few times a year to spend time with the other team members.

Make sure the reps have input: Too often sales reps are spoken too, rather than being engaged. It is key to give the sales reps an opportunity to participate, lead, and have any opportunity to make sure their thoughts are known.

One of the most challenging jobs in any company is being a salesperson and that challenge is even stronger if you are a sales leader.  Having a well-defined communication plan will allow you to make your team better and that should lead to more sales.  If you are interested in hearing about some of the other thoughts on improving your sales effort check out our Part-Time VP of Sales offering.

 

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Meetings are key in B2B sales, but so are the activities before and after

Posted on August 18, 2011

by Mark Elliott

Since starting Venture Accelerator Partners almost 5 years ago, we have worked with over 40 companies. One of the main activities we help to drive for our customers is sales meetings. “Get us in front of the right people and we will sell the solution” is often heard from our clients.  For non-sales people, I believe there is a general lack of understanding about what preparation is needed for the meeting and the follow-up after.

Meeting Preparation

It is hard to have a successful meeting without a plan.  Many of our meetings involve more than one person on our side, so devising a plan and planned agenda is a big help.  The VA Partners meeting plan includes:

  • Agenda
  • Customer participants and role
  • Why is the customer meeting us?
  • What are our goals for the meeting?
  • Next steps

It is important to have done the research on the target prospect.  This means looking at the company and the individuals involved in the meeting.  Some of the best sources of information – about the company and individuals involved in the meeting – come from the calls and emails you used to book the meeting.  It is important to supplement that information with additional research from the web and social media.

Follow-up

One of the most important components of a meeting is the next steps.  These should be activities that help to move the sales opportunity towards a closed account.  If a proposal is a next step, then an expectation on the time it should be delivered should be communicated.  Completing these tasks on-time demonstrates to the prospect that you are interested in doing business with them and you can be relied upon.

We recently had a meeting with a prospect with one of our clients that went very well.  There were lots of questions and interest in the meeting and during the demo.  The next step was a meeting with some of the other decision makers within the organization. After 3 weeks, 5 emails and 2 calls, we had our next meeting set-up, with some additional team members who were required to be involved in the sales cycle.When dealing with prospects you will often need to be the aggressor.  They don’t always follow-up when they say they will.

For more process idea’s see our Sales and Marketing Fast Start Plan.

 

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Profile of Top Salespeople

Posted on August 11, 2011

by Steve Gruber

This blog is for all people in a company of any size that are looking to hire a top salesperson in the future.  I found this piece below especially relevant since our entire business is built on providing companies with a part-time sales resource to help boost their revenues as fast as possible while building the infrastructure and process to support long-term sales growth.

The information below was based on a blog in the Harvard Business Review that was written by Steve Marshall a teacher of sales strategy at the USC Marshall School of Business.  His findings were based on interviewing thousands of top business to business sales people and doing personality tests on 1,000 of them.  Below I have summarized his findings of what attributes are found in the top salespeople.

Modesty:

Interestingly enough, the best salespeople are not push and egotistical.  Rather 91% of the top salespeople were relatively modest and humble.  These individuals also displayed a team sales approach, meaning they would not position themselves as the key resource in the sale, they would position the entire team and utilize the various team resources available to them to help close the deal

Conscientiousness:

Top salespeople are very serious about their jobs and take responsibility for the results.  The stats say that 85% of top salespeople were very conscientious.  These same individuals like to take control of the sales process and not let it be dictated to them by the customer or another competitor.  Why?  They want to control their own destiny.

Achievement Orientation:

Achieving goals and measuring their success in comparison to their goals is a key driver for over 80% of salespeople.  Top salespeople want to understand what is driving their customer’s decision making and will strategize as to how to ensure the products they are selling fit into the organization and the business pain it is solving. 

Curiosity:

Great salespeople are more curious than their less successful counterparts.  82% of great salespeople scored really high with respect to curiosity levels.  This level of curiosity correlates to taking an active interest in the client and asking qualifying and probing questions that will help lead to a close as soon as possible.

Lack of Gregariousness:

Top performers averaged a score of 30% less gregarious than their below average peers.  The reasoning here is that top sales performers while being friendly want to maintain a level of credibility with their customers such that recommendations made by the salesperson are followed.  Being too friendly leads to being too close to the customer, making it hard to operate on a peer to peer level where recommendations are easily given and then received.

Lack of Discouragement:

Over 90% of the best salespeople experience very little discouragement or sadness.  As you can imagine, most are optimistic and driven. 

Lack of Self-Consciousness:

Not surprisingly, over 95% of top salespeople have low levels of self-consciousness.   Meaning they do not get embarrassed easily.   The best salespeople are willing to fight hard to win the business and not afraid to stand up to their customers during the process.  They are action orientated and not afraid to cold call or call in at a high level.

I know it is tough to hire a great salesperson and I know we struggle with the same challenges trying to scale our own business.  I hope you find this piece written by Steve Marshall helpful when interviewing for your next candidate.  

If you are looking to hire a top sales team, that has the attributes listed above, feel free to contact us.  We are experienced, seasoned and have proven results. 

 

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Start ups need to stay focused and be wary of sales ‘busy work’

Posted on March 29, 2011

By Steve Gruber

To be a good sales person requires a number of skill sets including organization, being self-motivated, being a competitor, emotional investment and drive.  One of the most important facets of a good sales person is being able to focus on what is ultimately important.  Your efforts should be moving you ever closer to achieving your goals and helping the company to drive revenue.

During a recent conversation with a senior executive at a start-up company, it was brought to my attention that a sales person they are using was always busy but had no results of any tangible or measurable kind.   He mentioned that the sales person was trying to develop a partner network and negotiate these deals when what was needed was feet on the street sales efforts – selling direct to drive revenue and build up an installed base.

The situation outlined above happens all too often in sales.   Effort and time is spent on work that will never really pay off but seems on the surface to be important – what I call ‘busy work’.  This is a true lose: lose situation.  The sales person will become frustrated that they are not seeing any tangible results.  The company will feel the same way as they will have nothing to show for the sales persons’ efforts and their investment in him or her.

To help correct this all sales efforts should be based on a sales plan that is comprised of a set of activities that have been pre-determined by the sales person and sales manager.  This will ensure everyone is on the same page, effort is being invested wisely and success can be measured based on quantitative results.

In summary, be careful not to get caught up in ‘busy work’.  Stay focused and always ask yourself, is this really going to help me meet my goals? Is this activity moving the sale closer to being closed?  Don’t be afraid to be your own harshest critic!

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