Your sales team has the power to reshape your business and determine its success. When I say team, I mean the collective unit. Because while your top reps consistently out-perform, what sets your company apart is when your ‘core performers’ consistently hit or exceed their targets.
So, this sales enablement recipe for success focuses on making your top performers’ success something catchy that your middle team members replicate it. Let’s start!
Step 1: Where Am I?
If you’re on a boat in heavy rains trying to get to shore, you don’t simply start moving. You need to know where you are and where you’re pointed. Use some of the New Year downtime to look back through the data of 2015.
Ask what worked and what didn’t. Where were there gaps, bad conversions, or poor wins? Be brutally frank with yourself about what products, teams, messages, and programs sold and why. This is the moment to catalog the challenges and determine where you’d like to be at the same time next year.
Step 2: Set Your Goals and Mini-Goals
You’ve found your point on the map — where you are today. Now, you have to set the targets for where you want to be. Of course you have a number that you and your executive board targeted, but you need to go beyond that.
Fine military strategy laid down by a general behind the lines breaks down if it can’t be executed and improvised on by leaders on the ground. Good leaders know the value of communicating clear, achievable, but bold goals to their team. People you want to work with want to do something great, so be aggressive in your targets.
Break the global goal into its constituent parts and be clear to the team about what the expectations are. If you feel confident in the plan you set based on the items below, then be confident in your team. Inspire, coach, and motivate them to hit these big goals.
Step 3: Measure What Matters
It’s not enough to set a lofty goal that can’t be tracked. A goal without measurements is hope. You’ll never know if you hit it, and your team won’t know where to apply more effort. So, assess what characterizes the goal — sure, it’s probably bookings or revenue. But what comes next matters.
Just like you broke the goals into constituent parts (‘take that hill!’), you need to break measurements down into leading indicators. This may mean working with marketing or ops to measure indicators like lead flow, deal flow, deal age, or others.
Understand or have your analysts understand what measurements are truly correlated to success. Watch those numbers closely. And make sure your team can see those numbers. Your lieutenants need to see where they are weak and where they can contribute. Look to dashboards that your team can access.
Step 4: Process the Process
One-size-fits-all processes are not going to work. When you look back over your 2015 you’ll start to see patterns. You’ve probably spotted them throughout the year or sensed that a common theme kept happening in, say, the middle of the funnel when deals stall.
Look back at the problem areas and successes you identified. What was shared across these events? Was there a particular pitch that won? Process is about finding a path that works and codifying that best practice across your team. Process doesn’t mean that it will work every time. It does put you in the best position to succeed.
If we come back to the sales enablement need to make sure that your core performers succeed, these are the players that are most responsive to process. Don’t try to stifle your top performers, but do learn what in their process is repeatable and how to copy it.
Step 5: The Right People in the Right Seats
In any team there will be 10% that always hit their quota, 60% that will sometimes hit and sometimes miss, and 30% that are just going to consistently miss it. Don’t be afraid of changing the team and team mix.
By team mix I mean the composition of the team. I’ve met many sales people who became outstanding account managers but were not great in a new business role. Before you cut, understand if you have other holes that your people might be better fits for. You can’t let a “C” player take down the team, but you need to support the team and sometimes that’s through a new role.
Step 6: Invest in Your People
There’s a reason sports teams practice and practice the same motions. Because your core performers will be alone on a call with a prospect. And that prospect is going to give a subtle tell about the value they are looking for. Your team needs to be ready to act.
That immediate response — the reflexive action — can be taught. But it needs to be taught and reinforced through mentoring and coaching. So, training and tools that support just-in-time training need to be a critical focus. Ensure that your team has the muscle memory to act effectively in highly fluid situations.
Step 7: Operationalize It
Now you have to put your changes into place. Some of that can be through people and some through tools. There is a wave of sales and marketing technologies that can support and reinforce what you’re doing above. Look back at each element and see what actions or tools you already have or can bring on board to simplify the process.
For goals and measurement, are you communicating performance to your team effectively or do you need dashboard tools? Do you need to have a weekly review of leading indicators on your staff call?
For process and training, do you have a way to surface decision support to your team? Do you need to formalize a mentorship program? Do you need to look at outside recommendations for your process? Do you need a way to consistently communicate value to prospects?
Let’s make 2016 the year your whole team hits the goal shall we?