What If Your Clients Can't Sell?

Sooner or later your client is going to come to you for help with growing their sales team.

This is a challenge that every business must overcome if it is to progress past the level of sales that the founder can sustain. Unfortunately, this challenge proves too much for many businesses.

These businesses are marked by a succession of people with the title "salesperson" who arrive full of hope and leave some months later under a cloud having failed to deliver.

So what do you say when your client calls?  Well, here's an analysis of two businesses that have overcome this challenge and are growing fast.  Maybe you could take a line through their approach and discuss it with your client.

(They are in entirely different sectors - one selling software (transactional up to complex solutions sales) and the other a builders' merchant (almost entirely transactional sales). Both sectors are highly competitive, which makes their performance even more impressive.)

The things they have in common are:

  • They both use internal telesales teams supported by field sales as their primary sales method.
  • They both include a mix of account and new business sales in everyone's target. The account element has a strong propensity to buy in each case - license renewals and essential materials respectively.
  • They both hire people from outsde their industry and often people who do not have a sales background. One hired the chap who ran the sandwich van on the industrial estate where they are located.
  • They both see the social and competitive elements of working in a sales team in a single room as being important.
  • They both manage using numbers, and salespeople have clear targets linked to their remuneration.
  • They are both willing to use the stick as well as the carrot to motivate salespeople; they are both quick to dismiss under-performers.
  • They both have established and well-understood sales processes.
  • They both have simple competitive strategies and they have processes and systems to deliver consistently on this.
  • Marketing is a low priority in one business and moderately sophisticated in the other.

This is hardly a scientific analysis and I dare say it is riddled with assumptions and prejudices. However, what is working for these guys today would have worked for them fifty years ago and will work for your clients today:

  • Competitive positioning that is easily understood by sales and customers
  • Sales viewed as a process, not some deep relationship with loyal customers
  • Well organised, with efficient systems and processes
  • Managed using numbers, targets and reviews
  • Hire for attitude and quickly shed those who don't work out

The problem is, achieving this sales success is much harder work than blowing thousands on building social media followings or talking bollocks about "the new marketing".

Here is a complete set of tools and techniques to help your clients improve their sales.

(Adapted from an orignial post on www.nickbettes.co.uk)

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