Great top-line revenue organizations have sales-centric cultures that fire with full compression on five essential cylinders:
- Sourcing talent.
- Onboarding.
- Talent development.
- Reward & recognition.
- Strategic retention.
Sourcing talent. Pro selling starts with talent and great sales leaders do not fear hiring skilled people. Weak sales leaders do. They perceive precocious talents as threatening or difficult to manage. Consequently they hire down. A players hire B players, B players hire C players, C players hire D players, etc. I have seen this phenomenon around the world so often it is frightening.
Reward for high-performance sourcing: A skilled and stable workforce feeds off higher expectations of self by delivering consistently stronger results. Like any profession, better talent wins against lesser talent.
Penalty for inconsistent hiring: Sub-optimum performance, dissimilar client experiences (which lead to vulnerable relationships), and erratic turnover that leads to constant reactive hiring. None of these are good. Neither is hiring for “experience.” Experience and talent are not the same thing.
Onboarding. New hires are an expense until they reach the effectiveness stage and generate a payback. The quicker a company does this, the less money they waste and the more successful their people will quickly become. Until the employee reaches the “effectiveness stage,” all they are is a headcount expense.
Reward for smart onboarding: Morale is strong, optimism permeates the hallways, and confidence grows. Salespeople commit emotionally. Once fully engaged and ushered to competence, they will outperform those who are only somewhat engaged or disengaged.
Penalty for neglecting or cutting corners: Reps will either not commit or look to jump. People want expectations to match their on-the-job experiences. When companies cut corners — and many do — they always pay the price. Reps will be less efficient, less productive, and slower to reach a point of positive contribution. In essence, it costs more to spend less.
Talent development. Sales is a profession that requires systematic development. Without it, your team will have outdated skill sets in a real time marketplace of heightened competition.
Reward for steady, reliable talent development: Great reps win the deals they are supposed to win and some of the ones they’re supposed to lose. It takes talent to do this. Skills can and should be developed. Stronger skill sets win more deals. Invest in your people and their skills will grow. Best of all, they’ll sell more.
Penalty for not strategically investing in or developing your people: You will be easy to beat. Sales experience and sales competence are two different things. I coach my sales leaders that sales is the greatest of all professions because it is the fairest profession. When a customer decides between somewhat similar solutions presented by differing skill sets, their decision is predictable. Better wins. Mediocre loses to better but beats the unskilled. The unskilled beat only each other.
Reward & recognition. Pay for performance and recognize sales excellence. Recognition must be formal and informal. Do not make your people starve for a compliment. Sales is a great profession but a hard one; it has its up and downs. Celebrate the highs, pay fairly and promptly, and recognize a job well done.
Reward for smart compensation and recognition strategies: A self-motivated, stable workforce will outperform one that has lost its spark or desire. One of the best incentives you can offer a sales force is for one of them to earn a giant bonus. Others see it and think, “If she can do it, I can do it!” Then they chase it.
Penalty for unfair or misaligned comp plans: No good sales rep will tolerate an unfair comp plan or one that does not reward the inherent tasks of the job. Talent has options; good salespeople are always in demand, especially in value-based industries. Reps know when they are being taken advantage of. Once they reach that conclusion, they are very vulnerable to walking. The job market has had a bit of a fear-driven freeze to it. That freeze is thawing. Talent will move.
Strategic retention. Cull the herd. Keep who you want and career counsel the rest. It is foolhardy for any organization (or manager) to think they can develop 100 percent of their people to superstardom.
Sales organizations typically feature a bell curve of absolute performance. I call the three categories of reps, “Thrivers, Survivors, and Chevrolet Drivers.”
Thrivers are top performers (year after year). Survivors are low performers. Chevrolet drivers populate the vast middle section of the bell curve. It is from this talent pool that the next generation of sales stars develops.
Reward for keeping the right people: Stability, leadership, positive morale, teamwork, sustained performance, and satisfied customers. Well managed clients keep you less vulnerable to competitive threats.
Penalty for keeping the wrong people or losing good ones: Never subsidize or carry someone who cannot do the job; he or she drains both the P&L and morale. Lose a strong salesperson and it will cost you somewhere between six and eighteen months’ pay plus benefits before you can replace them with someone at a commensurate effectiveness stage.
Great sales organizations skillfully pull the strings in each of these five stages. If your company is having its ups and downs, discuss open and honestly as a leadership team each of the five. The area you need to shore up first will soon be apparent.
It is easy for a company to say it wants a strong sales force than it is to build one that self-sustains. The key is building block by block. Methodical execution in these five areas will get you there.