IS YOUR SALESFORCE PREPARED TO PRESENT YOUR COMPANY IN A PROFESIONAL WAY? (PART 1)
Companies that achieve total market domination often rely on a team selling approach to help them leverage all of their selling resources when they compete for major accounts.
Step 1: Identify the key players in your sales and marketing organization.
The only way to develop a world-class company is to assemble a world-class sales team that has the vision, skills, motivation, energy, and courage to create and market innovative products. Learning how to identify top performers and how to monetize them to make their best effort is the key to building a successful sales organization and a successful business.
Step 2: Describe your corporate culture.
Companies that achieve total market domination are able to attract the very best employees by providing a quality work environment.
Step 3: Review your company’s personnel policies
It is important to maintain an open channel of communication between your sales team and upper management, and to support your sales team with periodic performance and compensation reviews, competitive employee benefits, and recognition. If you don’t treat your sales team well, you may wind up competing against them – when they leave your company to work for one of its competitors.
Step 4: Review your organization chart to identify teams that may be restructured or automated to improve productivity.
An organization chart can help you visualize reporting relationship and can help you evaluate how and where information systems can be implemented in your company to support its selling process. When you review your organization chart, try to detach yourself from the individuals who are involved, and focus on the responsibilities that have been assigned and the tasks that each position is responsible for.
Map your sales representatives’ skills to specific business opportunities.
Matching sales people with specific skills and interests to different types of selling situations can help you leverage your sales team’s performance. Most companies assign their salespeople to specific accounts on the basis of geographical territories; however, it is often more effective to assign accounts on the basis of other factors. Some salespeople, for example, work best with existing accounts, while other salespeople excel at demand creation and closing new businesses.
The Cost of Replacing a Sales Representative
The cost to your company to replace a sales representative can be staggering. In many cases, sales representatives leave unexpectedly, without providing any opportunity to transition ongoing sales opportunities. And your company may spend weeks or months searching for a top performer to handle its open territory.
You can estimate the opportunity cost of replacing your sales representative by estimating the percent of quota that your new sales representative will generate during their first few quarters on the job. In most selling situations, new sales representatives do not generate any business during their first quarter and between 10 and 50 percent of their sales quota during their next two quarters.
For example, if your new sales representative makes no sales during their first quarter, sells 40 percent of quota their second quarter, 60 percent of quota their third quarter, and 100 percent of quota their fourth quarter, your company’s shortfall will be equal to 50 percent of their territory’s yearly quota. If the open territory has a sales quota of $1 million, and your company earns a gross profit of 50mpercent on its sales, replacing your sales representative will cost your company $250,000 in lost profits.
There is no way to avoid all of the costs of replacing a sales representative, but investing in a sales automation system can enable your company to reduce these costs by managing the information that a new sales representative needs to move active selling opportunities forward.
Excessive employee turnover is a warning signal
Excessive employee turnover is an important warning signal. If your company is experiencing excessive turnover, you will need to determine exactly why this is happening.
- Do your employees feel your company is a good place to work?
- Do your employees feel that their compensation plan is fair?
- Do your employees enjoy working with their managers?
- Are your employees concerned about the viability of your business?
- Do your employees feel that your company provides a good career path?
- Why did each employee whom left your company over the last year do so?
- Has a recent change, such as reorganizing sales territories or hiring a new manager, caused bad will?
Part 2 continues in the next article
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