Whether your sellers are off to a great start in the quarter…
or you’re beginning to worry about your team meeting quota…
every top performing sales manager is interested in increasing sales revenues.
When managers get together this is a hot topic.
They talk in terms of overcoming today’s challenges of:
- retaining top performers
- eliminating discounting
- filling the pipeline
- breaking into target accounts
- out-selling the competition or
- reducing the long sales cycle.
Everyone wants the secret sauce to boost sales revenues.
These 3 actions are guaranteed to increase your revenue 3x in 3 weeks.
The question is – are you willing to shift your thinking and schedule to implement these 3 actions?
If not, then stop complaining about less revenues.
Field Ride Alongs
Yes, I can hear the groaning now.
What, you want me to stop my busy paper work and meetings and get out of the office and ride along?
Yes.
Everything you think is important in the office – isn’t. In fact, if you get out and ride you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how many of the fires you were putting out in the office just go away.
In order to manage sales it’s important to observe what your sellers are doing.
How can you possibly coach someone if you aren’t watching them?
Would a 3rd baseman coach give advice to his 3rd baseman on how to do better if he never watched him in action?
I’m not suggesting you sell for your sales reps on these field ride alongs. I’m saying you watch and look for the good in the conversation and the areas for improvement and coach accordingly.
And field ride alongs are not only for the moderate to lower producers – it’s for everyone.
Riding with the top performers is a way of showing you value their contribution, provides an opportunity for praise and you’ll see their sales soar too.
Oh I hear the groans again.
First she wants me to get out of the office and conduct field ride-alongs.
Now she wants me to take time in the office and have one-on-one coaching sessions.
So, do you or don’t you want to increase your revenue 3x in 3 weeks?
These two tips alone will guarantee you of that.
It may be quite different than what you are currently doing.
But as Dr. Phil says, “How’s that working for you?”
The purpose of most of your one-on-one coaching sessions isn’t to ask what they’ve sold for you lately.
Take these conversations as an opportunity to discover what actions the sales rep is taking to:
- meet their business and personal goals
- the barriers that may be in the way of success and
- to collaborate on how to remove the barriers for success.
A word of warning – your sales reps are your customers.
Plan for the conversation:
- prepare open ended questions
- talk 20% of the time – listen 80% and
- allow them to self discover the solutions.
This last one is a sales manager’s biggest challenge because you want to give the solution.
When you do – you own it, not them.
So shut up and allow the sales rep to respond with their solution and don’t accept the answer “I don’t know.”
That’s a cop out and has no value in their personal growth development.
Most sales meetings I’ve observed are a lot of information dumps with a sales manager as a talking head.
No wonder why when we polled 20 sales people from 10 different organizations on what they thought of sales meetings – they said:
- Boring,
- Waste of My Time, and
- No Value.
I felt the same way when I was in sales and once I became a sales manager I vowed that I wouldn’t torture my sellers the same way.
Besides, I had a teaching degree and knew how to write training that engaged, energized and equipped sellers to sell more.
Our 60 minute Monday mornings consisted of 15 minutes of sharing excellence and any information that must be conveyed live and not via memo, followed by a 45 minute skill builder.
Our sellers were jazzed about leaving the office with new or refreshed selling tools to make a difference to their sales success and commissions.
This sounds like a lot of pressure on a sales manager to design and create great training without a teaching background.
It’s easier than you think.
One very easy way is to poll your sellers on what topics they’d like to have for sales training.
Next ask them who is good at the topic.
That seller becomes the “teacher” of the next sales meeting.
Instruct them to keep it to 30 minutes and design an interactive session.
How’s that to engage, energize and equip your sellers to sell more?
Increase Your Revenue 3X in 3 Weeks
How do I know these 3 actions will increase your revenues 3x in 3 weeks?
Because this is what I did…
and led top performing sales teams who out performed the other teams in the region and what I coach other sales managers to do so they too can have increased revenues.
Sales managers who listen and take action on these 3 actions have the same success.
Recently Patricia, at a client in California, took over as a regional sales manager of a team that previously had 4 sales managers in the past 18 months.
This region was in 5th place of 5 sales teams.
Morale was rock bottom.
Not a pretty picture to walk into.
Patricia immediately incorporated these 3 actions to increase revenues and within 8 weeks her team was #1.
These three actions may take you out of your comfort zone, yet it’s worth it if you want increased revenues in only 3 weeks!
By the way, if you’d like your sales reps to crush their numbers monthly check this out. http://bit.ly/1U5OTlD
