The right way to look at sales
We tend to think of sales as a black box. Quotas grow as if by magic or external causes, while failures come from bad luck or individual productivity. After all, we don't know what success or failure entails in this area that, without exaggeration, is vital to any business.
1. It is important to establish a common language, as we have in our sales rooms
First and foremost, establish a common language in your team. When every member has a different definition of what a lead or an opportunity means, there is a gap for chaos to enter, of course you can start from the most accepted definitions in sales. However, what is really important is that within your team there are unambiguous meanings, that everyone knows them and uses them.
2. Focus on what's in your power
We like to think of metrics as pointing to something specific. Metrics, while they can be useful, play a secondary role. What's the difference between the two? That indicators talk about something that is within my reach and within my team's ability to act. Metrics, on the other hand, contain some aspects that I cannot control.
Where in other companies it all comes down to how many deals a salesperson closed or not, we prefer to look at what the metrics say about each rep's conversation with customers.
Did he or she ask the questions that allowed him or her to learn about their needs? Did he or she nurture the conversation individually or focus on generic aspects? When a sales rep manages to close a deal, he or she did a part of the job. The rest was done by the customer saying "yes". As a leader, it's up to you to help your colleague put all the cards in his or her favor right up to the moment of decision.
3. Never stay at zero.
In sales we say that "if you're not prospecting, it's like you're not breathing". One more opportunity is an ace up your sleeve; of course, to achieve this you need the right tools to help you prospect more in less time (which we'll get to later). After all, your reps won't be able to double or triple their opportunities if they don't have a comprehensive picture of the business, who their leads are, and when they contacted each person.
4. Before we move on, we must review something fundamental:
Is it the mindset of your organization, your industry or even your environment that determines your chances of success? As we mentioned at the beginning, many companies see the sales department as a mere coincidence, and success in profitability as something that depends on luck. But in TAFER we know that In reality, the first thing you need to change is that way of seeing the world, the business and the performance of each of our salespeople. We have worked with clients who believed that they had to hire more agents because out of 10, half of them would probably fail. They had a "predisposition to fail". That's why they thought success was surprising, when it should be obvious. Instead of magic, there's a process of prediction and execution behind it, so you don't just look at your metrics as a number that you present to a board of directors every quarter, but as a source of information that you can compare over time and that will lead to greater efficiency, so you build a real team, rather than just a bunch of isolated reps. And when you have a team, you can replicate what works and systematically avoid bad practices.
5. Encourage and seek salespeople by vocation
Another fundamental change is the way you view sales, so you will transform your leadership and the vision of those who come into your department. Let's face it: commonly, people think that being in sales is the last thing someone can do, and only when they did not thrive in the other jobs available. We keep the image of the door-to-door salesperson, who has to work their hardest every day to make a minimal profit.
The truth is that sales is a career and a vocation. If you can, hire people who really love sales. If you can't, foster that dedication and love (although, of course, you'll have to grow them in you first). As salespeople, we are the ones who channel the needs of real people and help them solve them. We are an essential link between society and business, especially if we focus on our customers.
In TAFER, we lead our salespeople by thinking of this as their career destiny and motivate them toward personal and team success.
6. Establish an operating model
Think of all the previous tips as preparation for this one: create, improve and monitor an operating model. First of all, I'll give you what I consider to be the formula for sales success.
Revenue = (process x training x execution ) ^ opportunities
In other words, you need a process from which you can train your salespeople and move to execution to grow exponentially with your opportunities.
In TAFER we do this by creating an operating model: we will predict growth: we won't wait until the end of the quarter to know if you will reach goals or not. You will have a more accurate forecast.