Our question to you is…HOW ARE YOUR SALES?

For many of you, the answer is an unfortunate one. Many of you are probably answering, “Not really where I want them to be.” You look at your team and see a group of talented, experienced sales and marketing professionals—or maybe you are one—and you wonder, what are we doing wrong?

The path to successful sales has many factors, not the least of which is a good marketing engine, however one of the most critical factors is your SALES TEAM. Sure leads are important, brand position is important, product viability is important. But the truth is, if you don’t have a great sales team, the sale could still be lost. The sales team is where you must first focus your journey toward improving sales.

Do you have the right people, in the right roles, with the right incentives to help your company achieve the sales edge?

1. The Right People. Determining whether you have the right people in sales can be a painful exercise. There are so many variables that play into the analysis of what makes a successful sales person, such as experience, skills, subject matter knowledge, etc. The one variable, however, we find has the most impact to whether you have the right people in sales is PERSONALITY. Do you have Hunters or Farmers?

The Hunter of course is the person who gets their sales energy off of the “hunt” for the new opportunity. They are the consultative sales people who can innately find and assess an opportunity (even when there doesn’t appear to be one) within a prospect, and find a solution to meet their needs. The Farmer is the sales person who builds and cultivates relationships and opportunities, typically within existing accounts. Farmers are the sales people who turn a customer from good to great by the nature of their relationship and the loyalty they gain from their efforts.

Every company needs both. If you have a sales team full of hunters, you may acquire new customers fairly quickly, but experience high attrition in your existing business. If you have a team full of farmers, you may have a loyal customer base, but slower growth as new business is harder to come by. Based on your company goals, you’ll want to make sure you have a good mix of Hunters and Farmers.

2. The Right Roles. Sometimes we find that when we personality profile a sales team we’re working with that they have the right people, just not in the right roles. For example, putting a hunter behind a desk servicing existing accounts, or asking a farmer to go out into the field to hunt new customers. These are common scenarios found in sales organizations that are not operating at the levels they could be. Also, the sales structure must be designed to best match the goals of the company. Are you looking for high growth, entering new markets, and improving customer loyalty? These goals should feed heavily into the roles you have defined in the sales group and who you have in those roles.

3. The Right Incentives. The third element to an A.S.E. Sales Team is compensation and it is perhaps the item most often implemented incorrectly within sales organizations. Many of the compensation plans we look at have just the opposite effect they’re intended to have—sales people hate it, management hates it, and accounting hates it. They each have their own personal reasons why it doesn’t quite work for them, but the negative result is the same. An effective sales compensation plan needs careful consideration in six areas (Pay Mix, Pay or Credit Timing, Quotas, Leverage, Levels/Variables, Shortfalls/Pitfalls).

Putting a sales team together that has the right people, in the right roles, with the right incentives is your first step to achieving the sales edge. You must also have a solid sales process, arm your team with the necessary sales tools for each step in that process, and provide ongoing training to help keep their skills sharpened.

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The Sales and Marketing Toolkits BUNDLED contains:

• Over 60 sales and marketing templates (DOC, XLS, PPT, and PDFs)
  
  
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• 8 Training sessions (MP3 audio files) for your computer or iPod