How to Leverage Sales Meetings for Better Performance

By Anita Sirianni, The Professional Sales Coach

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Sales meetings are a big investment for the companies who host them and the salespeople who attend. Their importance for training, communicating and building camaraderie is unparalleled. But, how well do sales meetings influence bottom line productivity and sales performance? I help plan over 50 sales meetings each year and have participated in hundreds of successful and some not so successful meetings. I have observed several mistakes Sales Managers make that reduce the value meetings can have on sales performance.

The agendas are distributed, the welcome comments are made, the lights are dimmed and the marathon of PowerPoint presentations begins. One after another, managers, supervisors and company honchos deliver company news, product updates, and new sales plans. Present, pass the handouts, answer a few questions, and turn it over to the next speaker.

Sound familiar? What's the problem? Information delivered and it goes in one ear and out the other. Have you ever felt frustrated after your best ever super charged meeting and everyone went back to selling the way they always did? Sales people are naturally kinetic beings—they need and want to learn in a way that moves them. The monologue marathon of most sales meetings fails to engage reps. As a result, they have little effect on performance in the field.

Most experts agree—the optimal length for adult learners to retain a single thought or idea is seven minutes. We teach reps and manager how to incorporate "hot spice" into their presentations at regular intervals for maximum learning and retention. Presentations delivered at sales meetings should engage and get reps stimulated. This can be as simple as asking a question or as involved as initiating an exercise. Sales people naturally respond (and learn) by doing. Build your meetings and presentations around frequent opportunities for interaction, exchange and participation. The results will promote retention and ultimately improve performance in the field.

Another common mistake that hampers performance is packing more meeting into the time allocated. Considering the significant expense of most sales meetings—managers are tempted to squeeze in the most material in the shortest period of time. As a result, learning for reps is like drinking water out of a fire hose! Some signs and signals your meeting is over packed include running behind on planned agenda times. As the clock ticks by, meetings escalate into rapid fire data dumps. Question and answer sessions are relegated to email or when everyone has one foot out the door to catch their planes.

Overstuffing meetings causes reps to feel overwhelmed and frustrated. As a result, they are less effective in translating information gathered at meetings into action steps to sell with. As you plan, prioritize your key objectives. What are the most important action items reps should walk away with? Cross check this list against your company sales goals. How will the ideas presented and time allocated advance your sales initiatives and bottom line results? Think of different formats and times information can be disseminated. We helped one client organize a pre-meeting web conference to launch a product. This freed up precious sales meeting time for hands-on demonstration and role play. The result, a far greater return on results than traditional meeting formats. We worked with another company to improve trade show performance by distributing a simple email presentation prior to the show. Think of creative ways to reduce the "what to sell" data dump that often gobbles up the more important "how to sell" meeting time.

There are many ways you can use sales meetings as a valuable tool to improve performance. We have prepared a complimentary Sales Meeting Tool Kit for Sales Managers who want to more out of their meetings (and their people!). To obtain a copy, simply email us at Coach@AnitaSirianni.com or fax to 480-948-7705.

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Are You Running Around in Square Circles?

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Moving at high speed, trying to get more and more done. Thankfully, economic indicators show us headed toward blue skies again.

Have you been running around the same bases week after week, assuring that the essentials are under control? The urge to concentrate exclusively on crucial, immediate concerns can be overwhelming, but it's a mistake that can hinder growth. No matter how busy you are, strategy matters.

The economic slowdown compelled organizations to reverse the gradual creep of costly, unnecessary complexity, and that's good. But it has also meant weathering the storm with a smaller staff, and that's been a challenge. To drive results going forward, leaders must be equipped to keep every employee on track. With all the re-sizing, restructuring and belt tightening, it's very possible that many, if not all, of the roles at your company have changed. Make sure that the opportunities on the horizon don't dissipate into chaos because of cloudy communication and altered roles.

This is an opportunity for clarification, one that can improve your team's performance and lend momentum to achieving goals. There are day-to-day tasks and projects required to meet those goals. Use a patented process to benchmark jobs at your company and establish the key accountabilities for each position. It's the best way to communicate revised performance expectations to everyone on the team and ensure that nothing critical gets lost in the shuffle.

The simplified version of strategic planning is knowing what results you need to accomplish and having an action plan to produce them. Benchmarking jobs, identifying key accountabilities and defining priorities is a good foundation for your leadership plan. Getting through the recession requires a unique recovery plan for each business. There are already signs that some companies are doing a better job of rebounding than others.

©2010 TTI, Ltd.

Reaching Sales Goals — A Plan for Sales Managers…

By Anita Sirianni, The Professional Sales Coach

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Spring time is a season of renewed resolutions, 'fresh starts'. It is also a good time for sales reps to review and renew their annual sales goals. Some reps may be quite adept at goal setting, but it's rare to find salespeople who remain focused on their professional goals without some managerial guidance. And it's even more rare to find reps that are good at implementing plans over an extended period of time. Salespeople get busy and are easily distracted while trying to work a plan throughout an entire year. As a result, reps will be more successful achieving their goals with the support, direction and guidance of their manager.

Promote the Power of Planning

Salespeople know that setting goals is important, yet many tend to reject planning as busy work that gets in the way of selling. You must educate your team to view planning as an implementation step in achieving goals. It is the critical groundwork necessary to improve the attitudes, accuracy and accountability so many sales teams are lacking. Invest time up front, to help reps understand, view creating a sales plan as an invaluable tool in achieving their goals. The mistake I see many sales managers make is that completing sales plans is just a necessary report that is required, by them or the company, at the end of the year. The better you are able to have reps view this tool as an important step in getting where they want to go, the less you will have to work at getting them to use it!

Success Follows Structure

One of the fundamental reasons people don't achieve higher levels of performance in sales is the lack of a structured, organized way of achieving them. It is here that sales managers can offer invaluable support to their reps by teaching and coaching effective goal setting tactics.

Most sales people will embrace ideas they believe will help them achieve better results with less effort. As a sales manager, your job is to demonstrate how mapping out the implementation steps necessary to achieve sales goals will improve the likelihood goals will be met or exceeded. A Strategic Sales Plan is a written 'game plan' that outlines the specific tactics and strategies necessary to achieve personal and professional goals.

Every Strategic Sales Plan should be as unique as each territory and the representative who will execute it. A good plan will guide reps through important considerations needed by this territory, during this year, given the specific market conditions that exist at this time in this territory. The sales plan itself, as a deliverable, isn't the most important part of this process…it is the process reps must go through of investigating and answering key questions. I recommend providing reps with template or topic outline to create a more uniform format to boost consistency, making it easier to coach and provide better management support.

Encourage reps to customize their Plans to meet their needs and the needs of the market. Ask them to take into account a distributor or customer needing special attention or different strategies. Build the template to cause reps to view their market at a higher level than the view they have on a daily basis when their feet are on the street. This exercise will help to strengthen their research, data analysis skills and creativity while preparing these plans. The more reps put their unique thumbprints to the Sales Plans, the more they will own the results.

The Rewards of Reinforcement

Delivering final Strategic Sales Plans can be done one on one with managers to discuss the unique and specific details of each strategy. Another approach is to showcase each rep's strategy by presenting them to each other at a regional meeting. Group presentations encourage the support and fresh ideas from other members of the team. One of the most important ways managers can reinforce the value of a Strategic Sales Plan is to encourage reps to refer to the Plans throughout the year. In addition, consider conducting midyear reviews as a 'check up' on progress to plan.

Think of strategic sales planning as the beginning of a process to better goal achievement. A well thought out customized plan and consistent follow-through will keep your reps on task and focused on the endgame.

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Personal Accountability on the Job — The Key Factor to Superior Performance

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Personal accountability is not only an important skill to possess, but it is also in high demand.  In over 95% of the jobs we studied, we found personal accountability to be one of the top seven personal skills that are required for superior performance on the job.  Most companies would agree that responsibility for actions is a major component to success on the job and will look for this skill in any employee review or selection situation.  Unfortunately, personal accountability can be difficult to gauge and is often times not genuine until you can scratch through the surface.

If personal accountability is so important to success on the job, yet difficult to find, how can we look for this skill in today's talent?

To help you identify the skill of personal accountability, consider using the following interview questions in your selection process or employee evaluation.

• What person from history do you most admire for taking the blame for a failure? What did taking the blame do for that person?
  
• Give me an example of someone you know whose personal actions led to disastrous results. How answerable is that person for what happened? What advice would you give to that person?
• What is the worst business decision you ever made? What made it the worst? What would have helped you to avoid making that decision?

While questions like this might help you take a guess at the level of personal accountability an individual has, it is best to get a truly accurate picture of the skills they have through a individual assessment process.  This will eliminate all bias and give you statistical results that will easily help you take the next step in talent management.  Soft skills assessments and 360 degree surveys are commonly used in business practices today to accurately assess personal accountability and the many other skills that make each person unique.

Job Matching to Improve Hiring Accuracy

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By Anita Sirianni, The Professional Sales Coach

When sales and marketing executives get together, high turnover and poor productivity of salespeople are likely the two most widely discussed topics. Unfortunately, they rarely discuss challenges and poor hiring accuracy as a source of their performance troubles. The number of healthcare companies seeking ways to improve their hiring accuracy is rapidly growing.

In an article published by Harvard Business Review, Herbert and Jeanne Greenberg report on the myths associated with hiring. They studied more than 360,000 individuals from a variety (14) of industries in the US, Canada and Western Europe. Their results suggest selecting successful salespeople and sales managers can be accomplished by matching talent to job requirements.

The basis on which hiring judgments are made explains why high turnover of sales personnel in most industries including healthcare persists. Even where turnover is relatively low, approximately 20% of the salespeople account for 80% of the sales. Basing hiring decisions on myths rather than reality is, according to Greenberg's research, the reason that 55% of the people holding sales positions have little or no ability to sell, while another 25% have sales ability but are attempting to sell the 'wrong' product or service. The remaining 20% of salespeople are doing precisely the job that is appropriate for them and for their companies. It turns out, these reps were the same 20% producing 80% of the sales!

The study looked at a variety of myths and popular assumptions that influence hiring decisions. The following factors were evaluated and include these study results:

• Age (over 40 and under 40) 'When comparing the on-the-job performance of people over 40 with that of their under-40 counterparts, the study found no statistically significant difference.
  
• Sex (men vs. women) The results show, 'beyond statistical question, no performance difference between men and women.'
• Race (blacks vs. whites) The study concluded that 'blacks will perform on the job as well as their white associates.'
• Experience (experienced vs. inexperienced) The results of the study found that 'there was little difference in the performance between experienced individuals and those with no experience.'
• Education (college vs. high School) Unlike the four other criteria presented, 'the study showed there was some variation in the industry-to-industry variations according to levels of education. The college graduate and the multi-degree recipients slightly outperformed the less educated individuals in industries characterized by big-ticket, highly technical sales and by sales requiring lengthy follow up. The differences, seldom reached 5%.

Researchers found a better approach to predicting job performance can be accomplished through job matching. That is, to pursue a good match between the employee and the job.

For years, medical and dental employers have used a variety of tools to improve their hiring accuracy for years. These instruments provide insights about candidates difficult or unavailable from traditional interview and selection methods. Until recently, resources were limited to evaluating the talents of people—not jobs. Today, through advancements in benchmarking combined with the power of technology, matching job requirements with people talent has never been easier or more affordable. .

Critical requirements of the job are best defined through a defined benchmarking process. This involves top performers in the job or those with a clear understanding of the role. Each company has a unique combination of skills and talents required for success. Our experience benchmarking sales jobs for medical distributors and manufacturers exposed several common attributes of top performers:

• Self Management
• Teamwork
• Initiative and Drive
• Decision Making Ability
• Detail Orientation
• Conceptual Ability
• Empathy
• Self Starter

Employees and job candidates complete an on-line questionnaire to compare their talents to the company benchmark. The results can be used to make better hiring decisions, identify gaps in talent and job requirements (job matching) and expose training needs.

Through, years of research, experience and technological advancements, we've learned a lot about how to spot top sales talent, the value of which will prevent costly hiring mistakes, reduce turnover and yield improved productivity. In the end, success requires a combination of both science and gut to make the best hiring decisions.

ANSIR International, Inc. © 2010

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Invest in Your Talent

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Controlling Turnover and Addressing Disengagement with a Complete System

Turnover alone may be costing you millions, but what about the employees you still have? Is their disengagement costing you even more?

Fortunately, turnover and disengagement stem from job fit, and you can reduce costs associated with both by using a complete hiring system. With a process that looks at hiring from the very beginning to the very end, you can consider the job, the talent, professional development and performance management. However, with reduced budgets and overwhelming responses to job ads, many companies are finding themselves skipping a system all together. Unfortunately, a move like that doesn't come without a hefty cost, as doing nothing to ensure job fit will cost you more than implementing a complete hiring system to start controlling turnover and disengagement costs now.

With a solution for future turnover and disengagement costs, let's turn our focus to the disengaged employees on your payroll now. Can you determine the underlying issue? It may be decreased morale, lack of direction, little job satisfaction or no motivation. Whatever the case, you need to start by using the same complete system. Assess job fit by comparing the job and talent, ensure that each person is on a professional development plan, and then manage their performance with specific motivation, communication and responsibilities that fit their unique personal style and skills.

A dip in the economy shouldn't mean you loose track of the very asset that will turn your company around. Remember, now is the time to invest in your people.

©2010 TTI, Ltd.

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