Metrics—Which One is Most Important?

Feeling a little overwhelmed by all the new sales tracking technology that seems to come out every month (almost every week)?

If you’re like most companies, then you’ve probably got enough technology in place to measure just about everything: talk time, conversion rates, number of demos being given, lead flow and lead placement in the funnel—top end, middle, and end stage of leads.

And now with A.I., you can automate just about everything else—including phone calls, voice mails, email campaigns, etc.

While working with a new client last week, his management team was asking me which metrics they should focus on as they begin adopting the new best practice approaches we introduced.

Should they look at the increase in leads (or decrease because the leads will now be more qualified) or the number of opportunities?

Should they drill down on length of presentations?

How about numbers of calls? Contacts? Length of the first call?

While all things are important, my suggestion was to focus on the one metric that drives all the others: How the rep is performing while on the call.

What I stressed is using recordings to measure how well a rep handles each part of the phone call. For example, what does your team say when they are told to “Just email me something”?

How about: “We wouldn’t be interested right now?”

How well does your sales team respond to the objection given at the end of the demo: “Can you send me those slides and let me share this with a colleague?”

Measuring your team’s response to these crucial selling situations is what drives everything else, especially your bottom line: Sales.

So here are some questions for you (whether you are a sales manager or V.P. or business owner):

**Are you consistently listening to your team’s calls, grading them, and using the lessons learned to help them perform better each and every day?

If not, then don’t think that if they just make more calls or get more leads or schedule more demos, then you’ll improve your team’s closing percentage and make more sales.

They won’t.

What they will do is waste more time and resources and generate more frustration.

What you need to do is improve your team’s skills sets and improve the way they deal with the common selling situations they get over and over again.

And once you do that, you’ll finally move the needle on all the other metrics of your sales team.

So, begin paying attention to and measuring the most important metric of all: How your team responds to the recurring selling situations they get day in and day out.

If you’d like to know how to improve those skills, then get your team into my new on-demand inside sales training! See it here.


Need More Proven Responses to the Selling Situations You Face Every Day?


ON DEMAND SALES TRAINING THAT GETS RESULTS!

If your team is struggling with call reluctance and is tired of the endless rejection they face, then get instant access to our On Demand training today. We provide the exact talk tracks, templates, and proven tools your team will be motivated to apply, all structured around an award winning comprehensive inside sales approach that gives your team the confidence to succeed in every selling situation they face today.

Unlimited License: One to 100 reps can attend for one low price!

Perfect for reps dealing with the following issues:

  • Reps struggling with call reluctance
  • Getting screened out by the gatekeeper
  • Overcoming blow off objections like, “Just email me something”
  • Identifying decision makers
  • Qualifying prospects
  • Setting call back appointments that stick
  • Giving successful presentations and dealing with objections
  • Staying motivated

NFL Schedule Released this Thursday—Are You Ready?

Are you ready for some football? Ok, it’s a little early, but this Thursday, May 12, 2022, the NFL releases the season schedule!

As I thought about the teams currently in mini-camps, I thought about the coaching staffs. I thought about all the professional athletes who are still being coached, day in and day out, by coaches.

You’d think that after peewee football, high school football, college programs, and even years in the NFL, that the players would know by now how to play football. I mean, why do they still need coaches?

And that led me to think about sales teams and individual producers. I have the privilege of working with a lot of companies, coaching and training and scripting their sales process, but for each company I work with, there are thousands who go without ongoing coaching.

And, unfortunately, the result shows.

If you are a sales manager or business owner with an inside sales team, you need to offer each player on your team daily and weekly coaching. Here are three ways to go about that:

#1: Once a week, go over a recording with each of your reps and offer positive suggestions for how they can improve on their next call. Then, listen to their calls the next week and see if they’ve implemented the changes you tasked them with.

This is like football teams watching film of practice and games. No NFL team (or any other professional) could improve without constantly critiquing their performance.

If you are an individual sales producer, then grab a buddy and listen to each other’s calls on a weekly basis. This is the single most important thing you can do to improve.

#2: Make sure your team has a playbook and is drilling, practicing, and using the plays in it. Your playbook is, of course, the best practice scripts you have developed to help your sales team handle the objections and selling situations they face, day in and day out.

You do have an updated, proven script playbook, don’t you?

If you don’t, then it would be like an NFL team going into the huddle and having the players say, “I’m just going to get open!”

It’s a mess is that what is…

#3: Know your player’s statistics. Know what each rep’s close rate is, how many leads/prospects they generate, and make sure they all know it as well.

Management 101: You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

Again, think of NFL players: Every stat is known. Every yard they make, every tackle they make, every fumble or missed ball is recorded and added to their overall score.

And this is what the coaches work on to make them better—and use to gage improvement.

Coaching isn’t something that happens at the beginning of a player’s/rep’s career and then stops.

It’s an ongoing process that results in constant improvement.

I love being a coach to sales reps and companies, and I feel I’m great at what I do. If you or your team are looking for ideas on how to improve, reach out to me: Mike@mrinsidesales.com

I’d be happy to have a discussion with you and offer you some personalized suggestions.

In the meantime, 8 p.m. eastern, the NFL 2022 schedule releases.

Go Bucs!


Need More Proven Responses to the Selling Situations You Face Every Day?


ON DEMAND SALES TRAINING THAT GETS RESULTS!

If your team is struggling with call reluctance and is tired of the endless rejection they face, then get instant access to our On Demand training today. We provide the exact talk tracks, templates, and proven tools your team will be motivated to apply, all structured around an award winning comprehensive inside sales approach that gives your team the confidence to succeed in every selling situation they face today.

Unlimited License: One to 100 reps can attend for one low price!

Perfect for reps dealing with the following issues:

  • Reps struggling with call reluctance
  • Getting screened out by the gatekeeper
  • Overcoming blow off objections like, “Just email me something”
  • Identifying decision makers
  • Qualifying prospects
  • Setting call back appointments that stick
  • Giving successful presentations and dealing with objections
  • Staying motivated

Entrepreneurs: 3 Best Practices for Building an Inside Sales Team

If you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner and you want to sell your product or service over the phone successfully, then there are 3 things you need to know before you begin. Watch this short video, and I’ll tell you exactly what they are:

Sales Management: The One Metric That Matters Most

Greetings from Chicago! I’m here this week presenting at the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP) Leadership Summit. If you’re attending the Summit, then make sure and say hello to me.

And if you’re in the city, then stop by and join the breakout session I’m giving tomorrow, Wednesday, at 4:15 pm in the Mayfair room, entitled: The Sales Manager: Seven Crucial Skills Every Inside Sales Leaders Needs Now.

If you’re in sales leadership or in a direct sales management role, you’ll learn a ton of useful strategies and tools to help your team produce more and be more confident. I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow.

One of the “Seven Crucial Skills” I’ll be speaking on has to do with metrics. And the one metric I’ll be speaking about is the one that is the most important one for driving sales and making revenues. I wonder if you can guess what it is?

If you’re in management, then there are lots of metrics to choose from. Companies measure all kinds of things these days—number of phone calls, connect rates, presentations set, leads in the funnel, etc. With technology the way it is, there is no shortage of ways to break processes down and measure them.

But are you measuring the most important one? As you’ll learn today (and I’ll go into more detail tomorrow in my presentation), if you’re not measuring exactly how your reps are performing on the phones during their calls with prospects and clients, then you’re missing out on the most important metric of all.

When I say measuring how your reps are performing, I mean, of course, grading each part of both their prospecting call and/or their presentation calls. You do this by listening to their recordings and literally grading adherence to your best practice, scripted approach. For example, on the prospecting or cold call, did your rep:

  • Handle the gatekeeper professionally and get put through to the decision maker?
  • Make a connection with the decision maker and build instant rapport?
  • Deal with any resistance blow off statements with a best practice approach?
  • Give a quick value statement and give the prospect a chance to interact?
  • Engage the prospect so they didn’t feel pitched at?
  • Qualify the prospect thoroughly, discovering things like buying motive, decision process, timeline, etc.?
  • Set a specific follow up call and a follow up action?
  • Fill out a qualifying checklist?

As you can see, many of the regular metrics (listed previously) don’t drill down to this level of detail, but it is preciously this level of detail that determines how successful a rep will be in making a sale.

If you’d like to know more about how to get this information, and how to measure it, then either attend my breakout tomorrow, or reach out to me for coaching.

I’m looking forward to seeing many of you tomorrow!

Sorry, Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect

Practice doesn’t make perfect,

only practice of perfection makes perfect.

–Anonymous

This is one of my favorite sayings, and I love to use it during training or during a speaking event. I ask the audience how many people think that practice makes perfect, and you should see the hands shoot up! Everyone has heard this saying since they were kids, and most people believe it is true. And you should see the look on their faces when I tell them it’s not.

As they slowly put their hands down, I tell them that practice only makes permanent. If you practice something wrong – a golf swing, a sales rebuttal, etc. – you’re going to get really good at doing it wrong. In fact, it will be easy for you to be bad at something automatically, you won’t even have to think about it!

Unfortunately, whenever I go into a company and listen to their pitch, or the way they handle objections, or open their calls, I hear it. Many sales teams, and sales reps, are practicing poor selling techniques over and over again. And because they get into the same situations over and over again, they just keep saying and practicing the poor techniques.

And this is why they don’t see the consistent results they want. Think about it: If your prospect tells you at the end of your demo that they need to talk to their partner or spouse before they can make a decision, the right response isn’t, “Okay, when do you think I can call you back?” That is practicing a poor selling skill, and the result is a lot of calls backs and chasing unqualified leads.

The proper response – and the way to practice perfection in this instance – is to isolate this stall by saying, “I understand and you should speak with them. And if, after you do, they tell you to do what you think is best, then based on what we’ve just gone over, what would you tend to do?”

By isolating this stall – rather than buying into it – you’ll soon learn that any answer other than, “I’d do it,” means that asking their so-called partner or spouse isn’t the real objection. There is something else holding them back, and until you uncover and deal with that first, then you are just going to get stalled by this objection over and over again.

Practicing poor selling skills has another danger as well. It also ingrains poor techniques and turns them into habits. And habits are very hard to break. In fact, when teaching a team new and better selling techniques, one of the biggest challenges is getting them to first “un-learn” their old, ineffective habits. While they may do well in the first week or two with the new approach I teach, soon, if they’re not diligent, they can drift back to their old habits and poor skills.

That’s why constant, ongoing work and commitment is required in the first 90 days to make sure they learn and adopt the new habit of a best practice technique.

The good news is that by concentrating on practicing perfection, you’ll not only get better results – and what better reinforcement is there? – but you’ll also develop better habits. Soon, if you really stay focused and keep practicing your new techniques, it will be easy for you to succeed in the selling situations and objections you get into over and over again. And then soon, it will be like you to do things well and become a top producer.

And that’s when selling become easy, and your career becomes much more rewarding.

First We Form Habits, Then They Form Us

“First we form habits, 

then they form us.”

–Bob Moawad, Edge Learning Institute

I just worked with a great inside sales team in Louisville, KY (hi Kathy, Darryl and the team!), and this week they begin working with a new, best practice approach that is going to make them much more successful. I’m excited for them! At the close of each day of training, I told them that the biggest challenge isn’t going to be learning the new scripted approach (although that will definitely take some effort), but rather it will be in unlearning their old habits.

Now don’t get me wrong, habits are a good thing and without them we couldn’t get much done. In fact, the great thing about forming a habit is that once you do, you can rely on it almost unconsciously and so devote your time and energy to other things. Just think about driving your car. Once you learn how, you no longer have to take the time to learn how to pull out into traffic, change lanes, or learn how to parallel park. You just get in and your habit of driving takes over!

When you come to think about it, our lives are made up of a series of habits: habits of eating and exercise, of communicating with other people, family members, etc., and hundreds of other routines of living (think about brushing your teeth – do you floss?). Just imagine how much more difficult life would be if you had to learn all these things over every day!

So habits are a wonderful thing – if they are good ones. Unfortunately, we also can develop bad habits. Once, when I was working onsite for a few months many years ago, I got in the habit of visiting the food truck at the 10:00 A.M. break. They had the most delicious French Fries with a tangy salt, and I developed the habit of having them every day. Well, after three months I had put on almost five pounds.

That’s when I remembered today’s quote. What I found was that the French Fries habit I had formed was suddenly forming me! And when you think about it, all habits work the same way. And this is especially true in sales. If we develop poor prospecting habits, then we create unqualified prospects and appointments. This leads to a low closing percentage. If we develop an aversion to asking for the order, then we tend to create a lot of call backs.

Because many sales teams have developed bad selling habits, the first thing they need to do is unlearn the bad habits before they can learn newer, better ones. Here are three tips for doing just that:

  • The first thing you want to do is make sure it is easy for you to adopt the new habit of a better approach. In the case of learning a new scripted sales approach, I always like to use the Adele example. How many of you know the words to the song, “Hello”? Lots of you, right? That’s because you’ve heard it a hundred times!

The best way to learn a new script is to record yourself practicing it into a recording device (all smart phones have one), and then commit to listening to your recording 30 to 40 times. If you do that, then using them will become an easier habit for you.

  • Record yourself. Because habits are mostly unconscious, we often don’t even know when we’re using them! By recording yourself, and then listening to your recordings daily, you will become aware of what you’re saying, and you’ll have the ability to change that.
  • Reward yourself when you use the new scripted approach. When you catch yourself using the new scripts, give yourself some positive reinforcement. Hit a “That was easy” Staples button (get one for your desk), or use positive affirmations to support yourself. I used to say to myself, “See, I knew I could do it. And watch this, I’m going to do it again!”

Just know that the good news is that once you displace an old habit with a more effective one, the new one will take on a life of its own as well. That’s why top sales producers remain top sales producers regardless of what company they work for or what product or service they are selling.

So commit to learning a better practice approach in your sales environment, and then commit to developing it into a habit. When you do, you’ll find that your new habit will soon be forming a more successful and productive you!

Managing Millennials

Sales management has always been a balancing act between supporting people to achieve more, and pushing them to go beyond what they think they are capable of. In today’s environment of motivating, encouraging and driving performance from the “so-called” millennial generation, there is even more to balance.

Today’s millennials are an interesting blend of being super smart, intuitive, and demanding. Many feel they deserve more than they have perhaps earned yet – more money, a promotion, or even part ownership of the company after 6 months. You know, just like many of us did!

The bottom line is that in many ways millennials are not all that different than the way any other generations were, they are just more vocal about it. And good for them. I’m all for promoting, encouraging, and having people on my staff who feel they can do more.

When it comes to managing this part of the work force, some interesting challenges emerge. Some managers try to fit in with the millennial group (or are even millennials themselves), and they try to lead by getting others to like them. Managers who do this frequently lose their ability to direct their teams because they are afraid of exercising authority for fear of alienating their team members.

The problem is that most managers and other figures of authority — Directors, V.P.’s, and even Business Owners — have never been taught how to properly exercise authority and command respect as leaders.

If you find yourself in this position, follow this proven, 5-step method for exercising authority. It will not only get results, but it will establish, or re-establish, your role as leader of your sales team or department – regardless of their generation.

#1) Make sure your instructions are clear. Having ambiguous goals, or methods of achieving them, automatically undermines your authority and dooms many projects from the beginning. Rule #1 — be clear on the goal and the instructions on how to accomplish it. After you have delivered them, ask your team if they have any questions about what is required, so problems can be cleared up from the beginning.

#2) Encourage people to approach you if they run into problems. Establishing open communication and feedback early on is crucial to avoid big disappointments later. Helping team members resolve problems as they arise ensures quick resolution, continued progress, and good morale.

#3) Take action quickly when you learn of any real problems. Failing to act quickly once you learn of a problem, or putting it off for days or weeks, not only undermines your authority, but also kills morale and confidence. Problems tend to get bigger the longer they go unresolved, and your job as a leader is to solve problems not avoid them.

#4) Insist your team report all the news — good and bad. So many companies treat bad news like the plague. Sales teams are taught to “always be positive,” but an attitude of “always be accurate and let’s find a way to succeed,” is more productive (and realistic). In meetings and one-on-ones, your goal should be to motivate as well as problem solve. Always encourage your team to report all the news.

#5) Use crises as an opportunity to develop people. You are a leader for a reason! Rather than shy away from a crisis (a big deal lost, unexpected bad news, major delay in delivery, etc.), teach your team members how to find opportunity in crises and how to grow as professionals and as people. Focus on the skills or attitudes that are needed to overcome the situation, and work with them to develop and strengthen them.

This 5-step method to exercising authority is powerful and will establish you as a leader and as the “Go To” person in your company. And isn’t that why you are in a position of authority to begin with? Redefine your position of leadership by using and expanding on the 5 secrets above, and involve and build your team while you lead them to greater heights.

Six Steps for Creating a Successful Inside Sales Team

Inside sales – already an important component for many company’s sales efforts – is expanding as more companies develop or add to this valuable sales channel. Here are six things to consider to insure your new sales team is effective and profitable.

#1 Define the role of your inside sales team. When considering building or adding onto your inside sales team, defining their role will guide every decision you make, including who to hire, how to compensate, and how much training and supervision will be needed. Ask yourself: Is your inside sales team going to take just inbound calls or will they make outbound, prospecting calls as well? Will the majority of their calls to be existing customers, as in either growing accounts or upselling, or will they also be responsible for bringing in new business? And what part of the sales cycle will they contribute to – appointment setting, qualifying leads or closing sales? All these considerations will help define not only the role of your inside sales team, but will make other decisions more straightforward as well.

#2 Define your sales process. CSOinsights.com reports that you can improve the performance of your inside sales team by as much as 33% if you first define your sales process. Surprisingly, many companies overlook this crucial step. Developing a defined sales process, or “DSP,” simply means that you’ve identified each step a successful sale goes through, and you’ve identified the best practices of each step. Knowing exactly what needs to happen at each step in the sales process allows you to not only teach best practice sales approaches, but it allows you to measure adherence to this best practice approach as well.

#3 Develop effective phone scripts. Effective phone scripts – that are rehearsed, internalized and delivered in a natural way – often mean the difference between a team who regularly hits their sales targets and those that don’t. Because sales is a set of skills that can be taught, learned and repeated, it’s important to give your team the tools they’ll need right from the start. Since 80% of the selling situations they run into are the same day after day, teaching your team the most effective responses to these stalls and objections, enables them to stay positive, win sales and stay empowered.

#4 Record your calls. This one tip is the essence of all successful inside sales teams. Every major company uses recordings to train, measure improvement, and help coach their teams to better performance. Sales reps find recordings especially helpful because it gives them the awareness they don’t have while they’re on the phone and in the heat of the sale. By stepping back and listening to opportunities missed, and to areas that can be improved, they’ll be able to make adjustments and get better.

#5 Learn how to onboard your new reps effectively. Many companies spend more time training on their products and services, and on their procedures, than they do preparing their new reps how to succeed on the phone. Several things you can do include intensive role-playing sessions to help prepare new reps for the selling situations they’re about to face. Also, playing recordings of other sales reps successfully handing common objections also teaches them not only to expect these objections, but it provides them with specific examples of how to overcome them. This builds confidence and helps them experience success quicker – all of which increases their chances of turning into a productive, long term hire.

#6 Give your manager the training they need. Most managers have risen through the ranks of a company, and it’s not uncommon for a top producing sales rep to find themselves promoted to sales manager. The owner’s thinking is that if they could sell well, then they should be able to teach others to do what they could do. Unfortunately, successful sales management involves many other skills besides just a knowledge of how to close a sale. People skills, leadership skills, management skills, etc. are all important components in helping a sales manager be successful at hiring, training, and growing a successful inside sales team. To prepare them for that task, you’ll need to provide your sales manager with the specific type of sales management training they’ll need.

Understanding the importance of phone scripts

We all dread it: Your phone rings at night, and you’re greeted by a person reading a script who asks you how you are doing. “Fine,” you think, “as soon as I get rid of you!” Telemarketers like this have given phone scripts a bad name, but don’t let them discourage you from the proper use of this highly effective – and crucial – tool for inside sales.

Look at this this way: for those inside sales reps who say they would never be caught dead using a script, isn’t it true that if you were to record them for a week, transcribe what they say day in and day out, and then handed it back to them, you’d find that they are using a script already? The truth is, they are saying the same thing over and over again, and that is their “script.”

The real problem with this is that what they are repeating on each call is often a bad combination of poor sales techniques. Most sales reps have never been taught how to handle objections and stalls correctly, and as such, when they get into these situations, they usually fail. Think about it: how does your team respond to someone when, after a presentation, the prospect says they need to talk to their partner or spouse or another party?

Most sales reps respond to this smokescreen stall by asking them when a good time to call back would be. Or worse, they ask to speak to the other party, completely buying in to the smokescreen and not getting to the real objection. By using proven scripts, however, sales reps can be taught to isolate this smokescreen and thereby advance the sale.

Here’s how they should handle the “I want to talk to someone else” objection:

“That’s perfectly O.K. (prospect). Just out of curiosity, if they say to do whatever you think is best, and based on what we’ve gone over just now, what would you tend to do?”

This prepared, scripted, response is geared to cut through this smokescreen objection and get the prospect to reveal how they really feel about the product or service. Any answer other than “I’d move forward” means that talking to another person is just a smokescreen. Unless it’s explored and handled here, getting back to someone usually results in a missed sale.

This brings up two important points about all sales. The first is that the great benefit about being in sales is that 80% or more of the selling situations, objections or stalls a sales rep faces are going to be the same, day after day, month after month. The benefit here is that because they know what’s coming, all it takes is a little preparation to craft and deliver an effective response to them.

But that’s a step most sales reps and management teams tend to overlook. In fact, if you record most sales reps, you’ll find that they are, for the most part, ad-libbing on the phone. Most reps are making it up as they go along, and this means their responses are seldom consistent or effective.

Scripting proven, prepared responses and training on these scripts solves this problem, enabling your inside sales team to have the proven tools they need to overcome the situations they run into most often.

The other important point in sales ties into the above. You’ve probably heard that “practice makes perfect,” right? It’s actually not true. Practice only makes permanent, and the problem with most inside sales teams is that they are practicing, day in and day out, ineffective responses to the same selling situations they get over and over again. This is why such a large percentage of sales reps fail to make their revenue numbers each month.

The answer to improved and consistent sales, and to a confident sales team that does not experience call reluctance, is to equip them with, and train them on, effective, proven scripts which they can practice, internalize and then deliver naturally. Once an inside sales rep learns how to respond effectively to the selling situations they face most often, they will be freed from
thinking about what they are going to say next. And this will allow them to begin practicing the most important sales skill of all: listening to the needs and wants of their customers.

The Three Most Important Metrics to Measure

What are your three most important metrics you measure to track and predict revenue?

That was the question I asked my LinkedIn “Inside Sales Management Group,” and the answers I received were quite interesting. Whether you’re a business owner, sales manager or even a sales rep, you know that metrics are a crucial way to measure your performance, predict revenue, and evaluate progress made. But which metrics are the most important? Before I give you my answer, let me share some of the answers I received:

One answer was: 1) Opportunities created, 2) # of times contacted, and 3) conversions, deals closed.

I thought that was an interesting answer, especially the “# of times contacted.” While I understand the opportunities created and conversion or deals closed, I don’t know that I’d include # of times contacted as one of the three most important metrics to measure. Obviously it’s important to know how much time a sales rep is spending chasing a sale, and also how effectively they are closing on each call, but I think there is a more important metric that I’ll share later on.

Another answer was: 1) Opportunities created, 2) Calls made on the accounts, and 3) Quality of the call.

This was obviously in relation to account management calls, and once again opportunities created was listed number one. The thing that I found interesting with this answer was quality of the call. As you’ll see later in the article, quality of the call, and, more specifically, how that quality is measured, is one of my top three metrics.

The most interesting answer came from VP of Sales, DJ Farnworth. Here was his answer:

1) # of open deals (times) 2) Historical win rate (times) 3) Historical ave. deal size = Pipeline. DJ said:

“One metric I’ve found very effective is: (# open deals) X (historical win rate) X (historical avg. deal size) = Pipeline. This takes some of the moving variables out of measuring just the numbers that are in the existing open deals and is based on past performance which should better indicate likelihood than a probability entered by the sales person.”

What I liked about this answer is that it seemed to most accurately predict the upcoming pipeline. I’ve sat in a lot of pipeline meetings, some worldwide even, and almost everyone in the room knows there is a lot of ‘wood’ that isn’t going to close. Getting an accurate account of what is truly likely to come in seems hard. This formula seems easy. You should try it.

O.K., now for my answer:

1) # of opportunities, 2) Close percentage 3) Script grading adherence evaluation per closing call.

#3 (Script grading adherence) is based on recording each call and grading adherence to your best practice script and scripted rebuttals. The reason is if a rep is winging it, they won’t get better and you can’t coach them. The manager’s job is to teach the best practice approach and then coach to it. Then you measure who is adhering to it and who isn’t. Every other metric (number of calls, number of contacts, trending to revenue for the month), etc., flows from that direct metric.

I always like to talk metrics with managers to see if they are measuring this very important component. Bottom line is if your reps aren’t using the best approach and handling objections and sales situations effectively, then the other metrics won’t improve much. If you ask them to make more calls, all you will get is more bad calls.

I’d love to hear about some of your favorite metrics, so visit our site and submit some. In the meantime, begin listening to how your reps are performing during their call, and begin improving their delivery and technique. That’s how you automatically improve all the other metrics.

The NFL Has a Playbook, Do You?

Now that Labor Day is past, it’s time to think about getting back to work, pushing hard in September to set yourself up for the fourth quarter and….and….wait a minute. Fourth quarter? That reminds me the NFL season has just begun! Are you ready for some football? I sure am!

In preparation for the season, all 32 teams have been working hard on scripting out every play on offense, defense and special teams. They have studied the talents of their players and developed plays to maximize their strengths. They have analyzed their competition looking for tendencies and weaknesses, and they have scripted out the plays most likely to be successful against them.

After they designed these plays, they organized them into a playbook and then gave a copy to every player and coach – usually on an iPad, by the way – and they told them to study, learn and memorize every play and position during that play. It’s absolutely crucial that the players internalize each play so they react rather than think. As Dan Shula, the Superbowl winning ex-coach of the Miami Dolphins once said, “If you have to think about what to do next, it’s too late.”

An NFL playbook is a sacred thing. Most players are responsible for always knowing where their playbook is, if not to always having it with them. They bring it to every meeting they attend, take it home with them, and spend hours each day studying it. The only time they let it go is if they get cut. And no player ever wants to be told, “Coach wants to see you. Make sure and bring your playbook…”

No NFL team is without a playbook because no NFL team could be successful without it. And the same is true for a company with an inside sales department. If you own or run or are a part of an inside sales team, your playbook is your complete script book. Just like in football, your playbook also has sections. These sections include cold calling and qualifying, closing the sale and objection handling, and for call backs. It should also have a section of best emails and voice mails.

And just like in the NFL, every one of your sales reps need to study, learn and memorize every best practice response for every situation they get into. Just like in football, your sales reps need to automatically know how to handle the situations that find themselves in. When they get an objection or stall, they must automatically know how to respond. If they have to think about what to say, it’s too late!

In football, as in sales, being prepared with a proper game plan is crucial for success. No football team would just go out on a Sunday and wing it. That would be suicide for the coach and the team. Yet it’s amazing how many sales reps and sales teams do just that. Instead of taking the time to script out the best responses, they insist on ad-libbing and winging it. And then they wonder why they don’t win more sales.

To succeed in the game of sales, take a tip from the NFL – identify the selling situations your team gets into, identify every objection, question and stall, and then script out the best, most likely to succeed response to each of them. Give them to your team members and make them drill, practice and rehearse them. The most prepared team on Sunday tends to win. And the most prepared sales rep tends to close the most deals.

If you’re in sales management or an owner of an inside sales team, then it’s your responsibility to equip your team with the tools and techniques they need to win. And that starts with a playbook of scripts that will help them properly qualify prospects, overcome stalls and objections and close the sale.

Remember: No NFL team would think of entering the season without a carefully constructed playbook, and your team shouldn’t either.

Note: If you need help in writing the most effective playbook with rebuttals and scripts that really work, then contact me. I’ve written script playbooks for companies of anywhere from 25 pages to over 135 pages, and the sales teams that use them see increases of sales of as much as 34% in 90 days. Your team can, too!