Can you name the one or two best sales managers, or business owners you ever worked for? If so, how did they make you feel? What qualities or traits did they have in common, or which ones do you most try to emulate in your own company?

I work with a lot of business owners and managers, and I can tell you that the most successful ones all have at least four core characters in common. Many of them possess other qualities as well, but these four “Secrets” as I call them are always at the center of their power and charisma.

As you read through them, ask yourself which ones you currently have, which ones you’d like to strengthen, or which ones you can develop. Once you master them all, you will be able to lead any team and any company to greatness.

Here they are:

#1: Unbounded Optimism. Ask any great leader to describe the future, and they will always tell you it’s a wonderful place. Leaders are extremely goal oriented, have clearly identified what it is they want and what they are willing to sacrifice to get there, and they radiate an optimistic glow because they already live there in their mind’s eye.

Because people want to feel good about themselves and their futures, they naturally gravitate to winners. People want to work for and, in fact, work harder for people who are optimistic. Plus, optimism is contagious. A great leader can often turn an organization full of negativity around, and the excitement they inspire can result in greater morale and greater results.

If you’re in a position of authority, ask yourself if you’d want others to catch your attitude. If not, then focus on ways to become optimistic – you’ll be a much more effective leader when you are.

#2: Rock Solid Confidence. Great leaders are convinced they can do anything they set their minds to. I love a saying of Napoleon Bonaparte’s : “The improbable we’ll do at once. The impossible will take a little longer.” A leader’s attitude is: Whatever the challenge, we’ll find a way to overcome it.

Confident also leaders create confident followers, and a company, family, or team with an “I Can” attitude is unstoppable. The confidence of a great leader always inspires the best performance of his/her employees, and their team’s success just adds to and confirms the leader’s confidence.

#3: Integrity. In a recent survey about what qualities employees wanted from the managers and business owners they worked for, integrity was the most desired trait people picked. Integrity, including honesty, fairness and consistency of attitude and action, are traits that build confidence in a leader and that build loyalty in the people who report to them.

Leaders with integrity genuinely care about the company they are building or the job they are doing, and this helps everybody feel as if their work has meaning and makes a difference in people’s lives. Most people spend a third of their lives at their jobs, and while we go to work for a pay check it’s the intrinsic satisfaction someone gets from their work that allows them to feel fulfilled. Leaders with a high degree of integrity help foster this feeling by setting the example.

#4: Decisiveness: All great leaders are decisive and committed to the actions they take. This doesn’t mean they act capriciously, on the contrary, they fully weigh out and think through their options, but the key characteristic is that they aren’t afraid to make a decision and implement a plan of action.

Most employees tell many tales of bosses who are afraid of making a decision, or who frequently go back on them, and this habit of hesitation undermines their authority and the confidence of everyone in the organization. Leaders, on the other hand, may not always make the right decision, but they can be counted on to make a well thought out one, and then to take action on it. If facts change or results warrant it, they are flexible enough to reevaluate and make another decision.

If you’re in a leadership role, don’t shy away from decisions. Evaluate the data at the time and the relative need of making a decision and then choose the best course of action and commit. Making a decision – even if it’s the wrong decision – is better than making no decision at all.

If you are in a position of authority and wish to become an effective leader, then find ways of developing or strengthening these four characteristics in yourself. Remember, everyone is counting on you for guidance, and it is your ability to lead that will determine the ultimate result in your team or company.

Now, let me just say for the record that I agree with a lot more than just these two things that Jeffrey says, but these are things I’ve known for many, many years. I hope they resonate with you, too.

So here’s the scene: Large corporate sales convention in the company’s training center, over 250 sales reps flown in from all over the country; Sales directors, V.P.s, sales managers all running around stressing over the schedule, quotas, current sales, etc.

I’m speaking to the entire group (owners, board members in the audience, too), and after the training portion of my presentation, I ask the question that gets the managers and directors to shift uneasily in their seats: “What are the two most important determining factors in making sales and exceeding quotas?”

The reps raise their hands and start firing away, “Leads,” “The economy,” “The price of the product,” “Territory,” they yell out. The managers and directors are now sweating, and the owners and board members look irritated and even a little angry.

“While those things all play a part, the problem with them is that you have no control over them. So for that reason alone, they don’t qualify as being the most important things.” I tell them.

“There are only two things you CAN control and those happen to be the most important factors affecting your success. And they always will be,” I say. And what are those two things?

Your attitude and your actions.

Everything else flows from those two things. And the good news is that both of those things are directly under your control and when you learn to develop and maintain an expectant and enthusiastic attitude, and you take smart, consistent actions, you will always get the results you plan for.”

After I delivered this (and the rest of my talk), the managers and directors, V.P.’s and owners were all smiles. And so were the Top 20%, because they know the truth.

Ask any top performer this question, and you will get the same answer, albeit, in a different way. Some will say it’s how hard they work; others will say it’s their mental preparation, and still others will attribute their success to visualizing a win. But it all comes down to the same thing.

A winner will always take 100% responsibility for their results, while the other 80% will blame it on things outside their control. And that’s why winners will always eventually win, and the rest of the players will lose and make excuses.

It’s like my friend Jeffrey Gitomer once said, “Your boss can’t stop you; your co-workers can’t stop you; your territory can’t stop you; the economy can’t stop you. Only YOU can permanently stop you.” (I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist of it.)

In today’s business environment of social media, product reviews, so many Internet options to buy, etc., it’s crucially important that you develop, feed, and maintain a positive, expectant attitude of success. No matter what you’re going through right now, circumstances will change, and they WILL get better. The question is, what extra actions are you taking right now to ensure your success? Are you working harder AND smarter? Are you coming in early and leaving late? Are you going that extra mile every day including Fridays? Are you visualizing your success?

The bottom line is that if you focus on and take care of the two things you can control – your attitude and your actions – then nothing will stop you from reaching your goals.

That was a message all 250 sales reps in needed to hear, and I know that 20% of them already knew it and were already practicing it.

How about you?

Ask any manager, V.P. or business owner what one of the biggest challenges they face in making their revenue numbers and they’ll tell you it’s in identifying, hiring and retaining good sales reps. If you are familiar with my management philosophy, then you’ve heard me talk about the 80/20 rule in sales, and all you have to do is look at your own company or industry to know it’s still true – 80% of the sales and revenue are made by the Top 20%.

So how do you identify who the Top 20% are BEFORE you spend all that time and money on hiring, training and then hoping they perform? There are many ways to try to identify the characteristics in advance, and in fact a whole industry of profiling and assessment testing has sprouted up to help you make the right choice. I have used some of these tests and have found them to be quite accurate and valuable.

I have also found an easier way to identify who the potential top producers are, and I’ve boiled it down into three “Real Secrets.” If you are responsible for identifying and hiring sales reps in your company, then I recommend you use these techniques to help you find the right sales reps before you spend all that time and energy training, managing and hoping you’ve made the right choice.

Real Secret #1) The best predictor of future behavior and performance is past behavior and performance. This is a well known fact in psychology, and it’s one you can use to predict how a new sales rep is likely to perform for you. The bottom line is that however much your candidate earned in income in their last job, and the job before that, is mostly likely the amount they are going to earn working for you as well.

What you must determine is exactly how much money that was. Ask your candidate to provide you with pay stubs or verification of income for the last 6 months, and, in addition, ask them what they earned in income each of the last three years. Find a way to verify this.

Finally, determine how much of your product or service your candidate would have to sell to generate that kind of income again, and ask yourself if you would be happy with that level of performance – because that’s most likely what you’re going to get.

Real Secret #2) Determine what is really motivating your candidate. What we exposed in the first real secret was your candidate’s comfort zone. We all have comfort zones, and sales reps in particular will always live up to – and most likely down to – their comfort zone especially in terms of income.

So if your candidate is really looking to your company and opportunity to better themselves and earn more money, find out what is driving this need and desire for more money. Have their life circumstances changed? For example, have they recently gotten married, had a child, purchased a home? If so, then they may have a real motivation to work harder, make more money and enlarge their comfort zone.

If their situation hasn’t changed, then you can be pretty sure that they will not be motivated to work harder, learn more skills, and make more sales. In essence, they will continue to live down to their current comfort level and you may once again be hiring another 80% producer.

Real Secret #3) Access their sales skills and previous training. This is one of my favorites. During the interview, I ask my candidates how they think they would do selling my product. They all say, “I’d do great!” I then do two things:

1) I ask them to sell me on the product. What I’m looking for is for them to ask me qualifying questions rather than just start pitching. Those who just dive right in and start pitching reveal themselves as middle to low 80% producers. Top 20% producers, on the other hand, start asking me questions and gathering information. They are the ones I’m interested in.
2) Next I give them a couple of objections and watch and listen to how they handle them. You can immediately tell how much training someone has had, and how successful they were, by listening to them handle age old objections like “The price is too high,” and “I’ll have to talk to someone else first.”

These techniques have saved me hundreds of hours of poor hires, and they have often revealed who the real top producers were. Use them, and you’ll love how they will work for you as well.

A few months ago I was in Las Vegas training at a very large company’s sales summit. I love these events because I not only get to train wonderful groups of sales professionals, but because I always learn so much myself. Below is an example of five things I learned from one of the regional sales managers during one of his sessions to the group. They are in no particular order, but you’ll see there is a ton of tried and true wisdom and experience in each one.

#1: “Prospecting is a lot like panning for gold – you’re going to find a lot more dirt than gold.”

I loved this the moment I heard it. And how true it is! Just think of the old gold prospectors who toiled in the hills and caves and rivers panning for gold. They went through a lot more dirt than they did gold, didn’t they? And isn’t it interesting that the term for cold calling is now called prospecting….

Bottom line is that you still need to do a lot of work and make a lot of calls before you find your gold – a qualified client who buys.

#2: “Most sales reps who call prospects and have ‘commission breath.’”

Another gem! I’m sure you know just what that means. The secret to becoming a better sales person is to concentrate on listening to your prospects rather than pitching and begging a deal. Your goal should be to uncover buyers, not force unqualified leads into your pipeline so you can hound them and chase them with “commission breath.”

For some great techniques and word for word scripts to help you avoid commission breath, visit my blog here.

http://mrinsidesales.com/insidesalestrainingblog/tag/cold-calling-scripts

#3: “Don’t let the exceptions dictate the rule.”
I can’t tell you the number of times bad sales reps encounter one situation once and then base their whole approach on either avoiding or preparing for that situation again. And when they do, they throw away all the best practices and proven methods that work in the 90% of other situations. In other words, they let the one exception (“Well, back in ’83 someone said…”) and that hurts them their entire career.

What Top Sales Reps do is follow the fundamentals and practice perfection on each call. Whatever you do, don’t ‘let the exception dictate the rule.’

#4: “Use Bingo to make calling fun!” For all of you sales managers who missed my article on how to use the game of Bingo to make calling fun and rewarding, visit my blog here.

http://mrinsidesales.com/insidesalestrainingblog/how-to-use-bingo-to-increase-sales

#5: “Telemarketing training doesn’t exist anymore.” Another brilliant and right on comment. Back in the day (the eighties) when the word “inside sales” didn’t exist, there were true “telemarketing” rooms. And in these rooms, there was a ton of structure, scripts, recording and training. These rooms were mightily successful and helped build giant companies that are around today.

But along the way something happened. Telemarketing became a bad word, and as it was tossed out, so was all the great structured training and skill sets. This regional manager was right: ‘Telemarketing training doesn’t exist anymore,’ – but I’ll add – for the most part. There are still a few masters around who know how to build multi-million dollar inside sales teams, and luckily, you’re reading one right now.

If you’d like to learn more about how these proven techniques can help you do the same, then visit here.

http://www.mrinsidesales.com/ManagementTraining/

Hope you enjoyed the article!

One of the hardest things for sales reps to handle is a prospect who is not responding to them after they have done a presentation to them. I’m sure you’ve got some of them in your pipeline right now. You’ve given them your 45 minute demo, answered their few questions, asked for the deal and were told that they would show this to whomever… Then you start chasing them with phone calls and emails but never hear back from them. What do you do now?

The answer is you must have a structured approach and that starts with perhaps the most important part of the follow up and that is setting an appointment with your prospect before you get off the phone after your demo or presentation. Now I know what you’re thinking: “But they didn’t know when they would get an answer from the decision maker so she just told me I could follow up in a week – or two weeks, etc.” It doesn’t matter and here’s why:

At the end of each contact with a prospect, it is imperative that you schedule a date, or at least get the OK for a day and time to follow up with your prospect. Even if they won’t have the answer yet, that’s fine – what’s important is that you have a day and time to check back in with them. Ask them what day and time is good for them and let them know you’ve got it on your calendar and suggest they do so as well.

Once you’ve made this appointment (and don’t worry – I know there is most likely a 50/50 chance of them remembering or being ready for you, that’s fine – you now can reach out to them and use the following voice mail campaign to begin your reengagement. If they are not there or available when you call on your appointed day and time, use the following scripted voice mail sequence as it is and you will have the best chance of getting them to call you back.

Here is the first voice mail message to be used if, when calling to actually do your demo or presentation, they do not answer their phone:

“Good morning (afternoon) _________ this is ________ _________ with (your company). I’m just calling you for the appointment we have today at (2 pm) for the demonstration of our (marketing solution/lead gen – whatever your product or service is for your business). You may be on the phone or finishing up a meeting, but when you get this message, please reach back out to me.

You can call me on my direct line which is: (Leave number slowly). I’ll stay off the phone for a few minutes in anticipation of your call. Once again, my direct number is (leave slowly) and I look forward to speaking with you soon.”

Here is your follow up voice mail for after you’ve made your demonstration, for if they don’t answer their phone:

“Good morning (afternoon) _________ this is ________ _________ with (your company). I’m just calling you for the appointment we have today at (2 pm) to see if (Corporate/Regional Manager, boss, etc.) has any questions on the proposal I emailed you last (whatever the date was).

You may be on the phone or finishing up a meeting, but when you get this message, please reach back out to me. You can call me on my direct line which is: (Leave number slowly). I’ll stay off the phone for a few minutes in anticipation of your call. Once again, my direct number is (leave slowly) and I look forward to speaking with you soon.”

If you don’t hear back from your prospect for a day or two, then leave this voice mail the next time you call:

Third Voice Mail – Follow up to the initial follow up

“Good morning (afternoon) _________ this is ________ _________ with (your company). I’m sure you’ve been busy, but I do want to connect with you regarding the proposal I sent to you on (date sent).

_______, even if you haven’t gotten an answer from (Corp/Manager/boss) yet, please do me a favor and reach back out to me so we can schedule a time to speak.

You can call me on my direct line which is: (Leave number slowly). I’ll be available most of the day, but if you get my voice mail, just leave me a message. Once again, my direct number is (leave slowly) and I look forward to speaking with you soon.”

Now, if after leaving these messages you don’t hear back for a week or longer, I would send them an email (by the way, you should also follow up each of the voice mails above with an email that is very similar to your voice mails), and your email should be the “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” email. I’ve written about it before, but listed it below for your convenience:

The subject line from the title song by The Clash – “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” – is one you probably know and are already singing the song in your head… And here’s the body of the email:

“_________ I haven’t heard back from you and that tells me one of three things:

1) You’ve already chosen another company for this and if that’s the case please let me know so I can stop bothering you,

2) You’re still interested but haven’t had the time to get back to me yet.

3) You’ve fallen and can’t get up and in that case please let me know and I’ll call 911 for you…

Please let me know which one it is because I’m starting to worry… Thanks in advance and I look forward to hearing back from you.”

Are you smiling yet? It’s no wonder that people respond to this. Besides making someone smile, what makes it effective is it gives prospects a way out. It lets them know that it’s OK if they aren’t going to move forward with you, and it’s always better to know this in advance rather than to keep chasing and begging.

Also, this email gets those people who are still interested to reach out to you and let you know that as well.

The bottom line to an effective follow up strategy is to make sure it is set up right (always get an appointment for follow up), to use a structured and integrated voice mail and email approach, and to script these communications out in advance. Start following this approach and you’ll begin seeing more contacts and more deals.

New marketing funnels and lead nurturing campaigns have created what has always been a salesperson’s dream: more inbound leads. Sales reps love receiving these leads and tell me all the time that these “warm” leads must be better because they called in requesting information.

“These leads are more qualified because they are calling in,” I hear over and over. But we all know this isn’t necessarily true is it? In fact this attitude leads to one of the biggest mistake 80% of your competition is making when they receive warm leads — they go into pitch mode rather than qualification mode.

Eighty percent of your competition mistake the “implied interest” of an inbound lead to mean they are already qualified, and all they need to do is explain their product or service. Wrong!

Top reps, on the other hand, know that inbound leads can be some of the biggest time wasters of all, so they do what they always do — disqualify out people who are “just looking” so that they can identify and spend time with the real buyers.

And they do this by asking questions instead of pitching.

Here are some great questions to ask the next time you get an inbound lead:

How to ask for the buying motive:
“Thank you for contacting us today, what was it about our ad/promotion/website that motivated you to call us today?”

How to determine a shopper:
“Who else are you looking into?”

How to determine how close or far away you are from a potential deal:
“What do you like best so far?”

How to determine further motivation:
“How long have you been thinking about (buying, investing, changing) something like this?” Then,

How to determine the possible objections:
“What has kept you from acting on this?

How to determine time frame:
“When are you looking to make a decision on this?”
You see how this goes. Just remember, to be a Top 20% producer, you have to begin finding buyers — whatever the lead source. So stop pitching your inbound leads and start qualifying! Remember, it’s still up to you to find and separate the buyers from the non-buyers.

I’d like to thank all those readers who commented on the eZine article: “Using Bingo to Increase Sales.” I’m glad you found it useful, and I especially like how many of you sent in ideas and techniques of your own that you’ve used to motivate your sales team. One of our readers, Yvonne, sent in this technique called the “Turkey Shoot.” I think you’ll enjoy it:

“Mike, this reminds me of another way that we used to ‘get the job done.’ Perhaps you’ve heard of it, too.

Yvonne
What I really like about this technique is that it can be adapted to any sales initiative you’re having, and it can be used to motivate just about any kind of behavior (I love that she used this at home with the chores). This just shows you how important having goals can be and how hard people will work for recognition.

If you’ve enjoyed this article and have a game, contest or way of motivating your team that you’d like to share with me, please do me a favor and email at: Mike@mrinsidesales.com. The more we can learn from each other, the more successful we all will be!

Last week I was in Las Vegas presenting to a team of about 150 directors of inside sales and the subject was how they could to help their inside sales teams set more appointments. The problem their teams were having (and they are not unique in this way as many of you know through experience) was learning how to handle/bypass initial resistance and persevere through to getting their prospects to agree to an in house meeting. More specifically, the team was getting discouraged after one or two initial objections and giving up too soon.

To help them gain perspective on the importance of being persistent, I shared the following sales statistics with them:

48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect
25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
12% of sales people only make three contacts and stop
ONLY 10% of sales people make more than three contacts
2% of sales are made on the first contact
3% of sales are made on the second contact
5% of sales are made on the third contact
10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact

In terms of prospecting and asking for the appointment, these statistics are extremely useful. What the directors were finding was that their reps were giving up long before the prospect was ready to say yes to the appointment. What we needed to do was to A) teach the reps how to effectively handle the initial resistance they were getting, and then B) teach them how to persevere long enough to keep asking for the appointment until the prospect said yes.

To teach the reps how to handle initial resistance, we developed a playbook of scripted responses that equipped the reps with effective ways of dealing with the objections they get over and over again. Knowing how to confidently handle these objections is the first step to teaching the reps how to persevere in the face of rejection.

The second step in persevering long enough to finally get a yes to setting the appointment was to teach the reps that it was not only OK to repeatedly get several no’s or objections, but that it was actually necessary to get them. In other words, we needed to train the reps that more no’s they get, the nearer they were to actually getting the appointment. And this is where the Bingo idea came in.

There are many ways that front line supervisors and managers can mentor and coach sales reps through prospecting and closing calls, but a new way of teaching them to actually look forward to getting no’s is to make a game of it using Bingo as the model.

As many of you know, the game of bingo is played by matching numbers that are drawn to a game card that contains 24 numbered spaces in a 5 x 5 grid. Once a player completes a ‘Bingo’ pattern, such as a line with five numbers in a vertical, horizontal or diagonal row on one of their cards, they win the game and or a prize. During the training, one of the directors had a great idea that would use the game of bingo to help their sales reps overcome their fear of getting rejected.

She said that she was going to put a bingo card together, but she was going to replace the numbers on the card with abbreviations of objections. For example, she would make one of the squares “NI” for “Not Interested” and “NM” for “No Money” and “SI” for “Just send some information.” Then she would pass out a card to each sales rep during their next scheduled call night, and she would instruct the rep to cross out one of the squares whenever they got the corresponding objection. The first one to complete a ‘Bingo’ pattern would win!

The brilliance of this idea is that by making getting objections or blow offs a game the reps will be trained to not only expect them, but also to look forward to getting them as well. In fact, because reps often get several objections per call, the practice of completing a bingo card will train the rep that the more times they ask for the appointment on the same call (and so get more objections) the more they will ‘win’ at the game. Oh, and the more times they win at bingo, the more times they will win by getting an appointment as well.

Teaching sales reps to persevere through the objections and stalls they get on calls will result in more confidence, less fear and call reluctance and, of course, more appointments and sales. And the great thing about using bingo to teach this is that reps suddenly get to ‘reframe’ what is usually a demoralizing experience into a game of chance. The more chances they take in using the rebuttal scripts and asking for the appointment, the more chances they have to win at the game of sales.

I thanked Jill for this great training idea, and each time I mentioned it to the next group of directors they liked it, too. If you are in charge of a group of inside sales reps – or if you are an inside sales rep and need some help in persevering through objections – then I encourage you to try this out as well. Remember, persistence overcomes resistance, so use the game of bingo to teach your reps how to persevere to get the appointment or the sale – or both!

Recently I was asked by a client what a best in class inside sales organization looks like. This got me thinking about all the companies I’ve worked with, and after a while I picked a client company in Canada that I believe is practicing the 5 crucial elements that define it as “Best in Class.” Before we get into these elements, here is what they do and how we started working together.

A little over a year ago, I met the C.O.O of a young company in Canada that sells HR Solutions over the phone to businesses across Canada. This company was already doing well and had been designated one of the fastest growing companies in 2010. They had a team of about 35 inside sales reps and in each of their first two years they had broken new sales records. When we met over the phone, the C.O.O. told me that they had accomplished this without any official sales structure or training and he was anxious to see what kind of growth he could accomplish by implementing proper systems and sales processes.

After an initial evaluation, we identified several key areas that we could improve and after working together for several months, we implemented the following 5 elements that would ensure his company’s continued growth and their “Best in Class” status. Here they are:

Number One: The first thing we worked on was defining his sales process. As is the case in most sales rooms, of the 35 sales reps prospecting and closing accounts, there were about 35 different ways this was being done. It took some reps 2 calls to close a deal, while other reps needed to make 4, 5 and even as many as 8 calls to close deals.

In addition, while interviewing the reps I found that there were vastly different opinions on what was needed to close a sale. Some felt that extensive emails and information was important for gaining trust and closing the sale, while others used a demo of the website to sell a prospect. Still others relied on referrals from others within the prospect company, while others couldn’t tell me what the deciding factor was. They said they just sent out information to whomever appeared to be the decision maker and then hoped for the best.

So the first thing we needed to do was to look at how the top 20% of their sales reps were prospecting and closing sales and then standardize those successful techniques into a best practice structure. We started by indentifying the bench marks in each step and then used these to define the most effective sales process. I call this building the DSP (for Defined Sales Process), and once we had that in place, we could then develop a scripted sales approach that their entire team could use to be more effective.

Number Two: Once we had the DSP constructed, we then needed to take these best practice steps and benchmarks and turn them into a useable, repeatable scripted playbook. In other words, we took each step of their best practice sales process – starting with dealing with the gatekeeper, to identifying he decision maker, building rapport, qualifying, etc. – and we scripted, word for word, each part of the sales process out.

Taking the time to comprehensively script out each part of the sales process – including best practice voice mails, emails and complete objection handling – allowed them to equip each sales rep with the most effective way of handling the sales situations they were in 80 to 90% of their day. By developing and subsequently practicing a uniform and proven sales approach, the reps were able to qualify better prospects which allowed them to close more deals in a shorter period of time.

Number Three: Once a Defined Sales Process and a scripted playbook were in place, the company was now able to better empower their front line managers and supervisors because now they had a uniform way mentoring and coaching their sales reps. Prior to this process, when the reps were adlibbing and unstructured, the style of management was reactive and inefficient. Without a standard to grade, coach and evaluate by, the managers made inconsistent progress and were generally ineffective.

This all changed, however, once both sales reps and managers were following a proven, objective sales process and scripted sales approach. During this process we developed actual script grading adherence forms so managers could regularly grade adherence to the best practice sales approach. In addition, script grading also allowed the managers to target problem areas for each rep and design very specific development plans for improvement. Because each step of the process was defined and objective, evaluating and changing performance and measuring and tracking progress of these changes was now possible.

Number Four: Once these processes were in place, the company saw the need and benefit in rearranging personnel and redefining job descriptions to better manage and train their growing sales team. Some of these changes included reducing the sales quotas of their team leads/supervisors so they could spend more time in helping their reps improve their sales skills and close deals, and in tasking their sales director with more involvement in hiring and recruiting talent. In addition, they promoted one of their human resource members into a full time sales training position – something they had never had before.

A crucial change was the creation of a qualify control person whose sole job it was to listen to and grade recordings of the sales team. Because an important component in this process was to record and grade rep’s adherence to the new sales playbook (and so analyze their sales skills and measure their improvement), it immediately became apparent that listening to 35 sales rep’s calls was a full time job. The innovative change this company made was recognizing this need and creating a position to fill it. Having a full time quality control person allowed the front line managers to spend more time on the floor working with reps and it also provided the ‘real time’ feedback on how each rep performed during the actual sale and how they were tracking in terms of improvement.

Number Five: Motivating a sales team is an important component of sustained and improved sales performance, and in this area the company deviated from the daily cash bonus and spiff model of short term motivation and instead took a longer term approach. Recognizing the need to grow the sales team and the benefit of offering its employees a more sustained career model, the company created a career advancement program that rewarded long term sales performance by promoting sales reps into different levels of responsibility and increased pay.

The company created new team lead positions, new supervisory positions and even new customer reorder departments that created new growth opportunities for performing reps. Each of these new positions became linked to bi-annual performance goals and replaced the short term bonus plans previously in place. The result was a more engaged and motivated sales force who’s focus was more on the long term goals of the company rather than the short term goals of daily production.

While a lot changed in this company’s sales structure, focus and execution, the amazing thing was they were able to make these changes in a four to six month time frame. The results in terms increased sales production were exceptional. Not only did they grow sales by over 34% in their existing department of new business, but they were able to expand their current accounts business by penetrating deeper and cross selling departments and products.

The bottom line is that when this company took the time to improve and implement these 5 elements, they were able to leverage their existing sales personnel and create a scalable model for across the board sales improvement. And that is what I call a “Best in Class” sales company.

If you’ve benefitted from any of my sales articles, scripts or webinars,
then would you be willing to nominate me as one of the 25 Most Influential
Inside Sales Professionals working in the industry today?

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Thank you!
Mike Brooks