Managing A Sales Staff, Anything New?

Sales Meetings Galore!

Where has the time gone?  The minute I turn around another ten years has gone by.  Does this seem normal?  Where did all the time go?

Guess what?  Time flies.  There is so much to do and so little time.  The next thing we know, a decade has passed.  First one, then two and now three decades have gone by us in what seems like a flash.  Does this sound familiar in your business world?  It does mine.

Time has traveled so fast that sometimes we do not notice the changes that have occurred around us.  Some of those changes are huge.  Some of them are so subtle that we usually do not notice them until we go back and try doing something we used to do and it no longer fits.  Our old ways become obsolete.  They don't work anymore.

I think I have discovered one of those subtle changes.  The art of directing a sales staff effectively is no longer useful in the ways we used to do it.  Trust me, many sales managers are still trying to force a round peg into a square hole.  The way sales managers rally their troops to get motivated in going out to sell stuff to their customers has always been a predictable pattern to witness.  We pull them into a 'rally' room or a joint conference call and begin encouraging them to share their success stories with the others.  We might even play roll a situation or two.  Then we get to the brass tacks of the numbers.  We check to see what the current numbers of performance are with the wrap up emphasis directed towards our goals today.  We get closing commitments from those in attendance about what numbers they plan to achieve today and we send them out with a rah, rah set of encouragement.  We believe we have fired them up!

Oh, I forgot.  We also share any product specials and announcements since we have all of them together at once.  That is how we used to manage our sales staff.  Guess what?  I still see this kind of format and methodology still heavily used.  Everything else in this world has changed a great deal but the motivational work a sales manager does is somewhat the same as it has been performed for the past few decades.  Not much change here.

Well I am not satisfied with this type of leadership in sales.  Are you?

Is it time to reconstruct how we lead our valuable sales teams?  Just because we have new electronics and upgraded technologies does not necessarily mean we have developed better innovations for motivating our sales staffs of tomorrow.  In most cases, we are still doing the same patterns only with newer tools.  Today we use laptops, smart phones and online web cams.  Yet the sales meeting is much the same.  Gather together and share some unique and challenging common experiences, have a laugh or two, maybe dry run a play rolling situation, discuss some issues, review the numbers and set our daily goals...then pat them on the back and tell them to get out there and knock 'em dead.

Not much has changed in this world of directing sales.  Or has it?

Let's take a deeper look.  In a recent Google attempt I reviewed several top sales management websites.  Did you know what I found?  They all say about the same kinds of things.  They described various ways how to motivate the sales staff.  They offered importance to the methods needed to blend recognition with income.  They all have a favorite pattern of metrics for performance measurements they like to employ.  Each site had a various set of suggestions to describe how to manage routine meetings, motivational gatherings and information sharing opportunities.  I found a good deal of a lot of the same stuff that has been occurring for decades.  In a business world of change, the methods for motivating a sales staff apparently has not found much change inside the halls of its work.  Is it time for someone to develop a new set of useful innovations?  I wonder.

Management has seen a lot of emphasis surround the idea of best practices.  New ideas, new techniques and new ideologies have evolved.  Some very good ones have surfaced while some not so good ones came into the light.  That happens when innovation is pushed.  Some new ideas drift foul.  They once looked good when they first hit the air but with time, they curved well off the course of the expected desires.  Sometimes we simply fail.  Big deal.  Now we know what will not work.  To many innovative leaders, this is good news.

Who is trying out some new sales management innovations?  Anyone out there doing some unique and useful stuff?  Let's see.

Page two.

Sales Meetings Galore...What Does It Cost You?

I gave it a top dog effort.  I decided to go find out who is trying on new innovations for size.  I began to Google my searches to go discover new sales management innovations.  This is what I found.

I found some companies working towards the idea of building sales teams that were experts in translation, interpretation and educators.  These models were designed to help their sales staff become more important to the customer experience.  In fact, most of the companies discovered who were engaged in this kind of sales management effort were teaching their sales force how to become better problem solvers.  I like that approach.  The real trick to doing this well seems to come from who they hire.  Now I think we are getting somewhere.  Not everyone can become a good salesperson.  We all know that.  Not everyone wants to become a good salesperson.  We know this is also true.  Regardless of the techniques used, a person who does not desire to improve their own selling abilities is a person who in the end will do what they want to do bad enough.  No force, threats or creative techniques of motivation will do the trick.  Good salespeople find their own success.  That is usually the biggest truth about this whole game.

Let's see...is not the most important part of the sales process the close?  Do we not find the most important information at the end of the pitch when the sales person runs into the rejection the customer has hidden?  When the rejection appears, is this truly not where the solution work to solving problems is best discovered?  What if the sales person was hired, gifted with the appropriate talent and trained better to perform the art of translating the consumer information into discovering where the best customer problems remain that are waiting to be solved?  What if this process was the key focus of the new wave to motivate salespeople?  Instead of wasting valuable time reviewing metrics and training salespeople how to do what they already know how to do, what about hitting the streets and selling more stuff using people who love to improve the selling they do?  What a novel concept.  Hire quality salespeople, make sure you pay them what they are obviously worth and set them free to do what they naturally are driven to do.  Then give them tools that will help them solve your customers problems.  I like that approach!

Guess what?  I have not discovered very many companies performing this kind of quality work.  In fact, if a customer describes why they like a competitors cell phone better because of what it does that yours does not do, truthfully, no great salesperson can save your bacon for very long.  In the end, that customer will avoid your product because it does not solve their problem as well.  No blame can land on the porch of those great salespeople.  Even the best salespeople need better tools.  They definitely need better products to sell.  They also need better service systems.  They could also use better managerial support.  Oh, and how about improving the organizational communications?  That would be a novel concept as well.  Good salespeople need better company cultures.  That is exactly where the best salespeople go.  They go where the action is healthier.

I believe that the only reason why so many companies still use the old and tired routine patterns of sales management is because their organizations remain tired and useless.  The company direction, innovation, qualities for service and organizational structure is second rate.  That is exactly why they cannot attract quality salespeople.  As a result, they must resort back to the process of managing sub-par selling forces that require a kick in the fanny to become more motivated about improving their daily numbers.  Hence, old sales management techniques continually performed in ways that do not improve the long term performance of a growing company worth any measurable sustainable level.  A lot of the old stuff continues to be practiced.

Does this sound familiar?  Maybe it is time you quit looking to your sales staff for miracles.  Maybe it is time for your company to get off of its tired path of organizational existence and begin changing its model in areas of performance and design where it can become more useful for the consumers to support.

I might be describing how a new sales management strategy should appear.  It might have less to do with 'pushing' the sales people into a better way to sell ice to Eskimos and more about bringing new solutions to how the Eskimos can live better.  I think we can easily get caught up with expecting too much from a worn out, inexperienced and under-equipped sales staff.  I guess that is why we hire sales managers.  They can begin to support ways on how to cover up what ought not to be where we are headed.  Growth happens better when the right company does the right things at the right time with the right respect.  The need for trained salespeople is not such a problem with this kind of recognized culture.  The world of quality salespeople will come knocking at your door trying to become a small part of your winning ways if your business model is designed healthy, next to the idea of superior consumer support.

This is what I found when I went searching for better sales management tricks!  The numbers take care of themselves when the business model is humming correctly.  There is not a sales staff strong enough in the world to save a broken, misdirected and out-of-touch business model.  None.  Metrics all you want, the right kind of healthy growth will always be out of reach.  Eventually, you will need to find better ways to force your salespeople to find one sale!

Until next time...