high-performing sales team

8/3/2019 High-Performing Sales Team

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High -PerformingSales Teamsby Chris Lyt le

E veryone wants a sales team full of high-performance, hard -driv ing, revenue-produc ing profession-als . However, few companies know how to achieve this.Take an honest look at your own sales dep artm ent. Per-haps there are one or two high performers, a sizeablegroup of mediocre salespeople and a scattering of spacew as ters . To you this seem s abo ut av erag e. W hat you'dreally like to do is move the "mediocres" up to the nextlevel and do away with the poor performers.Poor sales performers do tremendous damage to yoursales team. When you allow them to t ang a round wi thoutprodu cing, you lose the resp ect of your entir e team . Thegood people leave gen erally w hen one person goes, twoothers follow and with them go asse ts like in sti tutio na lmem ory and so m etim es, clien ts. W hat's left is a sizeablegroup of disillusioned employees who come to view your

company as a place to work, not a place to grow.Your problem lies not so much in the people you haveworking for you as in your cu ltu re . W hat you actu ally needto do is to create a high performance culture, one wheresuccess bree ds success and w here poor performers sim plycan't hid e. You can m eet th is goal w ith the following t ip s:Hav e s t an d a rd s , not w ish es . Of course youwould like all of your salespeo ple to come to work every dayall fired up, fill their calendar with productive meetings


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the bulldog. You need m easura ble s tan da rd s by which youcan separate the wheat from the chaff. There are fourpossible sta nd ard s of measurement :Quantity standards: Anything th at can be counted: num-ber of sales calls, number of client lunches, number ofphone calls. These are the easiest s tandards to set but, asyou will see, they're not often the best ones.Quality standards: These are standards that includesubjective criteria. For instance, a sales call that yieldeddata th at can be used to w rite a proposal is clearly sup eriorto one that yielded no new information.Timeliness standards: Anything th at can be measured bystopwatch, clock or calendar . For instance, the t imebetween needs analysis and proposal, or the t im e betweenchecking and returning e-mail, voice mail and return cal l .Cost standards: These involve being a good steward ofthe company's resources. Such stan da rd s can mean refus-ing to give away too much to get the order; getting a ce rtainprice; not taking smaller, less productive clients on golfoutings.

The stand ards you choose to measure are up to you andyour situation.Make sure your standards lead to the resu l t syou really w an t. W hen you measure the wrong things,you end up shooting yourself in the foot. Ta ke th isanecdote abou t a Texas radio statio n sales m ana ger. "Thisnew sales manager told his staff, 'You must be out of theoffice by 9:00 each morning and you can't come back until4:00 p.m.'""So w ha t did the salespeople do? They rented an effi-ciency ap artm en t and put in thre e phone lines! So the salesmanager was measuring a s tandard tha t led to a behavior

he didn't want! He should have said, 'You need to be infront of customers horn 9 a.m. unti l 4 p.m.' The s tandard


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Define "hustle ." You need to clearly define w ha tyou wan t your sales team to do. Spell it ou t in no unce rta inte rms . I once did a seminar for a group of fast-foodfranchise managers, during which a woman asked, "Howcan I get a 16-yeQr.-old m inim um -wage employee to h u st lemore?" I explained to her "hu stle" m ean s different thin gsto different people. It 's sub jective. If you can 't pu t aproblem in behavior in terms then you don't have a prob-lem, you're ju st com plaining. The m anage r said theemployee walked too slowly when she went to clean upem pty tab les . She added she wished the girl would at lea stcre ate a sm all breeze when she walked by custom ers! SoI told her, "Okay, go back and get her to practice walkingby a table fast enough to make a napkin move, or rustlesomeone's h ai r. Now your employee will know w hat hu stlelooks like! It will ha ve a m eaningful definition, ins tead ofyou just accusing her of being lazy."

Enforce^ s ta n d a rd s ea rly (or, shovel the pileswh en th ey ' re sm al l ) . My favor i te bu sines s l ine i s'You've got to shovel the piles whe n"th ey're sm all." Th isspeaks to the importance of setting limits and followingthro ug h with consequen ces rig h t away . Suppose I set astan da rd th at by Friday every employee m ust have at leas tseven sa les m eetings booked for the n ext week. W ell, if Icome in on the first Friday and Joe only has five meetingsbooked, th en I can have a m eeting with h im and say, "LookJoe, we have a gap of two meetings here. You need to fixth a t righ t away." This is a sm all pile to shovel. But w hatha ppe ns if I let it go for mon ths and Joe h as fallen into t hehab it of ha vin g only, say, two meetin gs booked for the nextweek? That's a much bigger pile to shovel. If I don't dealwith it right away, when wiJII deal with it?"

C r e a t e m o n i t o r i n g s y s t e m s t h a t e n c o u r a g etea m s to reinforce th em se lve s. If you adopted a seven-


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must create a systemic way to make sure it is enforced.You might, for example, hold a progress meeting everyFriday afternoon to make su re every salesperso n h as his orher m eetings lined up . If yo u're too busy to do so, how longdo you think it will take before people start slacking off?But if you do th is every Fr ida y, it w on 't be long before yourold pros are telling new hires they must have sevenmeetings booked by the end of the week because "that 'sthe way we do it he re." The team beg ins to enforce thestandard because it 's become part of your high-perfor-mance culture.

Think of discipl ine as teaching/coaching, notconfro nta tion . Most people dislike confrontation, w hichis one reason so many salespeople get away with poorperform ance. The m anag er simp ly avoids confronting theissue until it 's way beyond critica l ma ss . But when youhave strictly enforced standards as part of your companypolicy, it 's easier to discipline as a tea ch er or coach, r a th e rtha n a tyr an t. The sta nd ard s allow you to approach theemployee as "you and me looking at the problem" ratherth an "me vs. you." In ste ad of say ing, "Joe, you lazy bum ,you've got to start working harder!" you're able to say,"Joe, you've only got five m ee ting s se t up for nex t week andour company sta nd ard is seven . You've got two weeks tocatch up. W hat's your plan today? W hat are your next fivecalls going to be? Who in your Rolodex can you call?" See thedifference? You're in teaching mode, not confrontation mode.

C reate "success cycle" sy ste m s. W hen you sethigh standards from day one, it ensures that even moder-ate salespeople will have early success exp eriences. Th esesuccesses lead to increased confidence and the self-imposed pre ssu re to do it aga in which in tu rn lead tomore successes. And other people in the department seethese successes and believe it can also happen to them.


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Developing a strong bench lets you get rid ofpoor pe rfo rm ers . Som etim es you will decide a salesper-son is ju st not salvag eab le. W hen this ha pp en s, you m ustget rid of him or he r as quickly as possible. So interviewreg ula rly. If you're intervie w ing two salespeople a mo nth,you will alw ays have- a sla te of po ten tial employees tochoose from if you have to le t someone go. And ju stknowing th a t you're interviewing keeps your team on its toes.

Try th is no-fail interv iew qu est io n. W hen Iinterview salespeople I always ask them to tell me aboutth ei r ten biggest wins. Really successful people are drivento achieve again and ag ain. They con stantly "raise the bar"on them selv es. So by ask ing this que stion, you quicklydiscern if someone is a winner or not.

Your salespeople are your m ost valu able asse t. Bu tmost m an ag ers don't know how to m otivate them . M anag-ers E iust teach th ei r salespeop le how to win and to doth at you mu st teach them the game within the gam e. I l iketo cite the exam ple of U niv ersity of W isconsin ba ske tballcoach Bo Ry^ani.' The standard he sets is "points perpossession" ra th er tha n trying to reach a particula r score.You can't manage a score; you can only manage perfor-m ance. Bo know s if his team scores 1.1 po ints per posses-sion, they 're v irtu ally a lock to w in. Po ints per p ossessionadd up to victory, just like meetings lead to analyses leadto proposals lead to money. Understanding and coachingthe game within th e game th at 's w hat creating a highperformance culture is all about. TAS

An acknowledged leade r in sales tra in in g, Ch ris Lytle isalso in dem and as a speake r and co nsu ltant in a dv ertising,m ark eting , sales and sales m an ag em en t. For more infor-


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