How do you ensure your Sales Assessment programme is successful and provides ROI?

In our last two blogs we have outlined our view on Sales Competency models and how you identify whether your sales people have the skills necessary for you to be successful.

This week we are focusing on how you can ensure measurable Return on Investment (ROI) from a Sales Assessment programme and how you actually assemble and communicate a programme that will ensure success for the Sales Management team and the sales people too.

The first point is to decide beforehand what you are going to do with your competency assessment results once you have them. This is vital because by beginning with the end in mind, it provides you with a platform for planning the rollout of the programme, how it is communicated and "sold" internally and helps you to focus on what you can do to improve your sales team once you have assessed them.

Putting your sales team through a series of competency assessments, both online and face to face sales simulations is potentially a stressful time for the sales team. Think about it - you are really saying to the team "we want to know if you can really do the job we are paying you for".

The first thing to do once you have decided on the format and structure of your sales assessment programme is to communicate it clearly to the sales team. Outline the purpose, clarify the objective and state simply how the programme will run and what will happen, when it will take place and most importantly what happens after the competency assessments have been completed - both for those that pass the assessment and those (maybe even more importantly) that do not. The single worst thing you can do is run the programme and then not have a development programme (or exit strategy) for those that do not live up to expectations.

A sales assessment programme, using competency models and quizzes to understand skills and knowledge it exactly that. it is a programme to assess current skills and knowledge. It will not tell you how your people actually perform in front of customers. In the same way that psychometric testing is about understanding personality types and characteristic traits a competency model will not per se improve selling in your business

What will improve performance is, having assessed the team and identified development needs, then working together the sales management team and the sales people work on adopting behaviours that improve performance until they become habits.

Our top ten tips for improving sales performance post a competency assessment programme are:-

1. Clearly communicate from the start why you are running the programme, what it involves and how the results will be used to improve selling behaviours
2. When rolling out the programme ensure all managers brief their teams on it's importance and encourage participation
3. Make it relevant to the sales people - both in terms of content of online quizzes and in terms of sales simulations
4. Provide feedback and coaching to all participants immediately after any face to face sales simulations
5. Use competency models that provide an output that you can use to improve selling - for example if you want to improve close rates then test closing capability in the sales simulation
6. Ensure Sales Managers are bought in and that they take on the responsibility for coaching and development of the team on an ongoing basis
7. Test regularly - not once every 5 years. Competency based assessments should be deployed every time a new portfolio item is launched or when there is a perceived dip in sales performance
8. Use the results of the programme to improve sales performance not as a big stick or threat of dismissal
9. If you need to run training courses as a result of gaps found in sales capability then re-assess skills and knowledge as part of the training course
10. Always remember the customer is the most important aspect of your sales process. Involve your customers by finding out what they think of your sales team's performance and build in their views into your competency testing

As ever we are really interested in your views and comments so please tell us what you think of competency models and give us your stories around what has and has not worked for you.

So how do I identify if my people are any good?

Having defined your sales competency model, as explained last week, our focus now shifts to how you measure people against the target competencies.

Measurement of knowledge is easy - "test them"
Without putting too fine a point on it, the easiest way to to understand your people's knowledge is to test them. Simple quizzes are an ideal way to identify what people know - here are three things to consider:

1. Ensure the quiz is relevant to the sales person - Don't expect them to know something that does not help them with making sales, keep it relevant
2. Ensure that the answers are to be found in content they have access to - don't set people up to fail
3. Keep it simple, avoid complex questions, instead ask questions on the types of things a customer, colleague or manager might ask.

Specific skills - Let's do a self assessment

On the face of it, self assessment is ideal for understanding what people think their sales skills are, but remember we are addressing specific skills that are better suited to "test" that have clear right and wrong answers.

What can we test?

• Numeracy skills
• Literacy skills
• Verbal reasoning and communication skills

So what about the rest?

You can self assess on the remaining skills - for example "When preparing for a meeting which of the following do you normally do......". Self assessment for people you do not know is an ideal solution, used as part of the recruitment process it helps identify the candidates potential capabilities.

However, we do have reservations about solely relying on self-assessment when you know the people. Consider this:

• How would you react if you knew you were being assessed - would you try and second guess the answer you think people want to hear?
• If asked to rate yourself would you over exaggerate or downplay?
• Would you try and beat the system?

If you answered yes to any of these you can see why we may have reservations about solely relying on self assessment. Our suggestion is that you should still undertake a self assessment programme, but follow it up with a manager's review where the managers have the opportunity to ask people to justify/clarify their answers. This can result in either downgrading or upgrading.

OK so I have tested skills and knowledge, what about attributes?

Use a specialist who will measure the attributes (often through a psychometric test) of individuals. But remember, do not just take the "standard" sales person attributes, include your organisational culture. Many large organisations recruit "rain makers" in the hope that they will bring in large deals. These people have all the attributes of a great sales person, but invariably they leave within a year having had little impact. Why does this happen? Because they do not fit in culturally - they want full autonomy, but culturally the company cannot deliver that!

You now have a picture of your people - map it against your target roles.

Remember your are assessing people against a competency model made up of Knowledge, Skills and Attributes, you should be able to map people against the target "skylines" for their roles.

But all you have found out is what your people are capable of, you do not know if they do it when under pressure - in front of a client.

Objectively assess your people doing their job

We are not suggesting anything radical here, if you were putting your people through a vocational NVQ you would expect to review people doing their job. Selling is the ultimate vocational job, success is in the doing not understanding the theory.

To effectively assess "the doing" part of selling consider the following:

• Assessment must be consistent so create an assessment schema that everyone uses - build different schemas for the key parts of the sales cycle
• Get managers to run the assessments - they need to understand what people actually do, only then will they take responsibility for coaching
• Don't set people up to fail, initial assessments should be based on role play.
• Use real customer scenarios for the role plays - this is practice before they see the customer
• Be brave, if people are below the required standard don't let them near the client, you only get one chance to sell.

Should you use just one supplier?

We would always suggest you look at best of breed suppliers, but you ought to have a single assessment repository. Remember you are assessing people against a competency model, therefore you need to map the results against this model, link the results to a development plan and ongoing coaching.

We are clearly biased on this view, but we have just rolled out an assessment programme for a global organisation that has used three different sources for assessment content. The company created their own sales skills and product knowledge test, they used a third party for the attributes and we provided the assessment engine as well as the observational assessments. The result is that they have gathered a rounded view of their people, managers are being encouraged to coach their people based on the results and they are mandated to do regular observational assessments.

We can show you the assessment tool

You can see an example of observational assessments by going to our generic assessment tool - www.esquaredm.com Log-in with e-mail address trial@trial.com and password trial. If you would like a demonstration of the fully integrated assessment tool including knowledge test, skills assessment and attribute measurement contact us via e-mail (mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com or fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com) or call Mark on +44 7782 162300.

Next week we will look at what you need to do to ensure that your programme is successful and delivers a measurable return.

So what is an effective competency model?

Firstly, thank you for the feedback we received, please do keep contacting us as it is important that the work Fred and I put into this does not only reflect our personal experiences.

So what is an effective sales competency model?
I have a simple definition for you - a description of what a high performing sales person does in order to sell to your customers. There is a key phrase in this definition - sell to your customers. The sales competency should not be generic, it must reflect what is required to sell to your customers. Whilst there are some standard components, key for an effective competency model is to reflect the buying style of your customers.

Let me give you an example: There is no point in creating a competency model that is assessing sales people against a complex, consultative sales approach, when your customer base is transactional and is looking for the easiest buying process - differentiation is in the ease of placing orders, offering simple up-sell and cross-sell opportunities and providing a consistent and timely order fulfilment.

The reason I emphasise the need to reflect your environment is that it is this that differentiates between a sales competency model and an effective competency model. I feel I should apologise for stating the obvious, but if you are investing time, effort and money in building a sales competency model, it must add value, provide a structure for coaching your people to be better and ultimately drive sales.


So what should the components of this competency model be?
The ultimate sales competency model should show direct links to your sales engagement model. It can be broken down into the following parts:

1. People attributes - We all know that there are specific attributes we look for in a successful sales person; resilience, challenging, self motivated, success focussed, etc. The mix of these attributes will vary between the roles within your sales organisation and the complexity of the sale. Please do not forget your organisation's culture, you should be looking for people who "fit" and as such there are certain attributes that you should be identifying that makes for a good fit. Remember, the occasional maverick sales person who achieves their number may be fine, but you cannot have a team of them.
2. Specific skills - This is not just the obvious sales skills, but should include areas such as numeracy, literacy and also some less obvious such as collaboration skills, speaking skills, and management skills
3. Knowledge - Clearly sales people need to know stuff - but what is that stuff?
1. Product knowledge - The key features and advantages of the portfolio
2. Market knowledge - What is driving customers, what problems do they face and how does the portfolio help them solve these problems?
3. Sales process knowledge - There are key processes that the sales person should know about, either linked to a specific sales methodology or to the way in which you operate.
4. The ability to do - If you just measure Knowledge, Skills and Attributes, you have successfully identified people who have the potential to be an effective sales person. However I would suggest you should go beyond potential and find out what they really do. Therefore we recommend that your competency model should include measurements of how the sales people actually behave. Think it as the difference between the driving theory test, the driving test and then actually driving. As a parent, like many others, the minute my sons passed their driving test I wanted to go on a long drive with them to see how they drove once they had passed the test. Of course it was different, but key was to ensure that the differences reflected the needs of driving in the local areas as opposed to the driving test route.

But whose Competency Model should you use?

There are a lot of external competency models that are based on extensive research of sales people in many continents and they are especially effective in identifying specific attributes of successful sales people along with benchmarking specific skills against a wide population of sales people.

These are very helpful as they provide a level of external validation of "what good may look like". But as I pointed out earlier, an effective competency model needs to be personalised to your environment and the requirements of your customers. A purely external model, whilst useful will not deliver the increase in sales that a tailored model will give you.

It is also worthwhile learning the lesson of many organisations who buy in a competency model without the support of sales management is that these all ultimately fail to deliver the desired results. Why? Because they do not reflect the sales management style that exists within the organisation. The result is that sales management undermine the competency model as they drive alternative behaviours.

So in answer to the question "whose competency model?" - Yours, a combination of external (off the shelf) and tailored to reflect your "uniqueness".

A request - Don't forget to link the competency model to coaching

• Having a competency model does not improve sales performance in itself
• Knowing what your people look like against the competency does not improve sales performance
• To improve sales performance you have to get people to do what the sales competency is driving towards.

Too many people think that benchmarking against a competency model will automatically mean people improve. They won't!

The only way to get the return on your investment in defining the competency model is once you have benchmarked your people you have to be prepared to coach people to behave in the required manner. To make this easy you need to identify how you move people along the competency model as you are defining the model.

Before you run off scared that this means an expensive training programme, it does not. Your sales managers should be able to coach their people, you just have to provide the tools.

We want to hear from you

Please share your experiences of building a competency model. If you are a sales manager, a sales rep, or a sales director, we would like to understand what lessons you have learnt.

We do not want anything complicated, just the answer to 3 questions

1. What did you measure?
2. How did you measure it?
3. What did you do with the information?

As we are only talking to sales people we know you will want something in return.

We will put the names of all those who respond into a "virtual hat" and then provide them and up to 8 colleagues with a free assessment and coaching on their approach to selling.

Send us your responses now!

Either add a comment to the blog and share it with others, or send us your thoughtsdirectly by email to either mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com or fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com.

Next week we will look at how you how to measure people against the competency model

Competency models and assessment - Where do we start?

We have been promising for a while that we would start to look at a subject dear to our hearts, competency and assessment. Rather than immediately going into one of our normal tirades over what people are doing wrong, we wanted to start with some definitions and to get some feedback, either via the blog or directly.

Let's start with what a competency model is and why we might need it?
Here are some definitions that Fred and I hear when we are talking to clients, we would be interested in your thoughts.

1. A definition of the attributes we want our sales people to have
2. A combination of the attributes and knowledge we expect our people to have to be successful as sales people
3. A set of attributes, knowledge and skills that we are looking for in our people
4. A definition of what a world class sales person looks like
5. A definition of what we expect our people to do in their role, what they need to know and how they need to behave to successfully fulfil their role
6. A set of people skills we can measure

The above are all definitions we have been given by both prospects and existing clients. Once we have heard what they think they are looking for in a competency model, we then ask them what they want to do with it?

1. Use it for recruitment
2. Use it to identify "high flyers"
3. Use it to identify "people in the wrong job"
4. Create a definition of what good looks like
5. To create a "world class" sales organisation
6. Because our competition is doing it

Of course it is really important to find out who the competency model is for, i.e. what are you going to do with the results?

1. For HR to benchmark people
2. For Learning & Development to see what training is required
3. For Learning & Development to validate the effectiveness of training
4. For the Sales Director to see what their team looks like
5. For the individual sales people to understand what they need to look like to be better at their job.

We would like to know what you would want from a competency model?

Rather than immediately tell you what we think, we would like to hear from you. How will a competency model help you? If you are a sales manager, a sales rep, or a sales director, we would like to understand what value you would like to gain from being assessed against a competency model.

We do not want anything complicated, just the answer to 3 questions

1. What would you like a competency model to tell you
2. How would you like to be measured against the model
3. What would you like to do with the information.

As we are only talking to sales people we know you will want something in return.

We will put the names of all those who respond into a "virtual hat" and then provide them and up to 8 colleagues with a free assessment and coaching on their approach to selling.

Send us your responses now!

Either add a comment to the blog and share it with others, or send us your thoughtsdirectly  by email to either mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com or fred.nelson@sales-accredit.com. 

Next week we will look at how you create an effective competency model

Why do people buy?

Been a hectic couple of weeks so sorry there has been no blog from Mark or me since early September. At the end of our last blog, we promised to write a blog on Competency Models. Well that is going to have to wait at least one more week because this week we wanted to talk about some fundamentals of selling and buying.

Pretty simple question this week - "Why do people buy?"

There are a couple of threads at present on some of the LinkedIn groups about salespeople needing to understand their own business and that of their clients really well if they are to be successful. Of course we agree - if you do not understand your own business, your portfolio, your key metrics and if you do not find out that information about your clients then you will struggle to convince people to buy from you.

But let's go back to the very simple question of "Why do people buy?"

Our view is as simple as the question. People buy for their own reasons - it is that simple. People buy to be better off as a result of making the decision to buy something. In a B2B world it may seem that your customer buys your product to solve a problem and of course that is true - to an extent. What is certain is that the decision maker will have more than just logical, business reasons for buying from you. There will be all of the emotional reasons tied up in the decision too. These are "their own reasons".

So what are "their own reasons' and how do you get to understand them?

Well guess what - we are back to one of our favourite subjects - you get to understand "their own reasons' by asking great questions and really listening to the responses. By the way I saw a great line last week which read "Listening is not the same as Waiting to Talk".

So listening, really deeply listening will uncover "their own reasons".

So when a CFO says to you "I may buy from you if you can save me some money" that sounds like an obvious thing to say for a CFO doesn't it? But if you can get deeply into his/her personal needs for saving money (looking good in front of the boss, saving our business from disaster, not repeating that mistake I made last year, earning my bonus by saving the business £s, etc, etc) then you are truly getting to "their own reasons"

So bearing in mind all buying decisions are emotional and for the personal reasons of the buyer we want to remind you of some basics:

1. Always ask questions that get you closer to the real, emotional, personal reasons for wanting to solve a business problem
2. Talk about the benefits to the customer of buying your products.
3. Do not talk about your products.
4. Ensure that your client is emotionally better off by buying your product
5. Listen intently to uncover the real "hot button" emotional reason for wanting to solve a particular business problem that can be addressed through the benefits your product brings

As always we are interested in your views so please post a comment

Do you want to know more?

Either read our Helping business drive sales document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help you create and manage your solution assessments enabling you to ensure your sales organisation is maximising the opportunities your portfolio creates.

How do you handle your own environmental changes?

We have talked about "the environment" quite a lot lately. But we are not concerned here specifically about greenhouse gases and CO2 emissions (we are really and generally but if you follow us regularly, which many of you do, you will know that we are actually talking about the corporate environment we all work within)

We have recently related to you some of the issues that our clients are having to handle at present. Whether it is how to define a winning go to market strategy for a new proposition or how to handle the fact that there is constant change and uncertainty in a large organisation.

What we are very conscious of, both as sales-people (where we are trying to sell to our customers) and advisors (where we are helping drive the effectiveness of the sales and marketing teams), is the impact a perceived negative environment has. Whether it is decision makers failing to make decisions (no point re-org coming soon) or managers seeing everything as an initiative (they are like buses, if I ignore this one, another will come along shortly), the environment is often used as an excuse for inaction. As I am sure you have noticed, here at Accredit our philosophy is all about the doing - turning new behaviours into habits. For this to happen, inactivity is not an option.

Suffice to say that s*** happens and we all have to deal with it, remain focused and get on with the job. It is within your own power, at what ever level in the organisation you are, to do the right thing. As Brian Tracy would say, you are the CEO of "Me corporation" if you want to make a difference, then you have to do something about it yourself.

So if any of are you are currently going through a period of uncertainty or of rapid change then here are a few tips that will hopefully help you focus on driving "Me corporation" forward.

1. Change is constant. It is a fact of life. Accept it and focus on your job
2. We would all like to be in control, but there are some forces greater than us (usually the spreadsheet departments). Focus on your areas of control, they are your sphere of influence. For all the external issues you need to decide if they are Important and/or Urgent and prioritise accordingly.
3. Don't just change for change sake, link the change to your personal goals. By doing this, you can ensure that the environment works in your favour
4. Align your personal goals to the corporate strategy, this means that your success is directly linked to the organisation's success. You cannot have a Win/Win for You/The company without you both being aligned to a set of common goals
5. Being in sales we always have goals - to hit our targets. Focus on those irrespective of what is going on around you. If every salesperson spends every day taking action to hit their target then the organisational environment will, as if by magic, sort itself if the numbers are achieved.
6. Convert your goals into a plan, objectives and actions. Is everything you are currently doing enabling you to achieve your targets (irrespective of what is happening around you environmentally)?
7. Are you hitting your sales call targets? The more people you see the more chance you have of qualifying in some good prospects.
8. Are you going in to see customers with a great interpretation of your organisation's key marketing messages? Are you making these relevant to your customer's situation? When we are in organisational turmoil and a lot of change the fundamentals of selling become even more important.

We regularly see cases of effective people who succeed "in spite of the environment". These mavericks are the high performers in dysfunctional organisations, but they are impossible to replicate. However, we can all become good performers in dysfunctional organisations by focussing on doing the right things and investing our time where we will maximise the return, talking to our customers. If we all did this, we can guarantee (and that is not a word we tend to use) that we would all sell more.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our Helping business drive sales document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help you create and manage your solution assessments enabling you to ensure your sales organisation is maximising the opportunities your portfolio creates.

Next week we will start to look at - "How to use competency models to improve performance.

Why would your channel sell your product if you cannot sell them the value?

A regular discussion we are a party to is "our channel partners are not selling as much as we had hoped, or they had committed to". This quickly turns into a conversation about how the channel partner's sales teams cannot sell the products/solutions provided, usually because "they cannot do solution selling!"

Now if you have followed our previous blogs, you will know what our reaction to this is likely to be - Before you blame the sales team (resources), have a look at the message and environment.

The best way of illustrating this is to provide you with two examples we have recently encountered.

We will not sell your offering it does not pass the "Ronseal Test"
We have been working with a client who has a new solution targeted at the SME marketplace and their largest channel partner has been failing to sell it. The initial reaction was that the sales team were just not up to it, but further discussion uncovered the real issue - Perception was the solution did not meet the customer need.


Sales people will not discuss a solution they have no confidence in, and this clearly manifests itself in a channel partner. The sales people have a range of offerings to sell, from a number of suppliers. Why should they take a chance on solution they have no confidence in? Human nature will always drive us to focus on the easiest things. The things we are comfortable with.

Further examination of the situation identified the real problem. The solution was targeted at a particular customer type and if the sales team properly qualified their targets they would have discovered that when positioned to the right customers the proposed solution not only addressed their issues but importantly delivered significant value when compared to the competition.

Interestingly, when we spoke with our client's sales team about the solution they had a similar perception about its relevance, and they too were reticent to introduce it to customers.

What exactly are you asking me to sell?
Here is a second example of an organisation with what they believe is a class leading product that none of their partners is selling in any quantity. In order to understand why, we facilitated a workshop which included product marketing, senior channel managers and technical specialists. The objective was to agree the key propositions that would encourage the partners to sell more of the product.

The workshop ultimately stalled on a key discussion, could anyone define what the product really was and what business issues it actually addressed. Consensus was the product could do anything you wanted it to, but this was of course not helpful to the channel partners. Beyond this, every channel was different in how they wanted to engage and what they were looking for from the product.

There was universal agreement that in the words of Einstein “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”. The key action from the workshop was to find a way of explaining what problems the product solves and how this would be of benefit to the partner. There was recognition that this would probably result in a number of messages reflecting the differences in the partners. Linked with this there was also recognition of the need to move away from thinking "sell to" or "sell through" and to start thinking "sell with".

So what is our message to you?
Your channel is just an extension of your sales team, with the same issues of Message, Environment, Resources.

• If your sales team cannot articulate the message, why should you expect your channel partners to do any better?
• If your channel partner's environment is not aligned to selling your product/solution, why would you expect the sales team to sell it?
• Are you making it easy for your partners to work with you? Remember they are not dedicated to just selling your products/solution, you are competing for mind-share constantly
• Think "sell with", be part of the solution to selling more.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our Helping business drive sales document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help you create and manage your solution assessments enabling you to ensure your sales organisation is maximising the opportunities your portfolio creates.

We’re all doomed - the environment is killing us

Relax, this is not another doom and gloom blog on global warming, but is of equal importance to all sales teams. Your managers, at all levels, might be facing environmental fatigue, they may have given up trying to make changes.

Environmental fatigue - Is it really that bad?
A manager when asked the question “why don’t you get your Sales Managers and General Managers in one room and get direct feedback from them?” replied, “If I do that as a Senior Manager I would have to make them a commitment that I would take their issues away and do something about them. I'm not able to make that sort of commitment....”

Another manager recently told us that they were under increasing pressure to run with sales cycles even though their bid analysis told them to "no bid" as they could not deliver the solution.

What is interesting about these examples is that the statements were made to our consultants when we were carrying out sales management assessments. In both cases the senior management of our clients’ asked us to assess managers as they felt there was a problem with the capabilities of sales management.

Remember the Emperor's new clothes?
The 2 examples given are classic cases of senior management creating an environment that is not supportive of sales managers, but then blaming poor performance on sales managers. As with the Emperor's new clothes they have not looked at themselves to see if they are part of the problem (and therefore the solution) and no-one feels empowered to tell them, in the words of the little boy “but he’s not wearing anything!”

Senior Management needs to look in the mirror and check that they are not part of the problem. However in order to do this they need to want to see the truth, unlike the Emperor who even when looking in the mirror saw what he wanted to see, a fine set of clothes.

It is only when senior management recognise the influence they have in acting as a barrier for the successful implementation of solutions they have signed off, that sales organisations will change their behaviours. Don’t just take our word for this, Channel Four has a successful programme that is built on exactly this premise - “Undercover Boss”.

A fish rots from the head
As this expression suggests, there is no point looking at the bottom of the chain of command and trying to change it if you have not made sure that the change is supportable from the top.

As we have said in the past, unless you create a supportive environment that will help drive your required behavioural change in sales management and selling styles, you are just throwing good money after bad.

All truly successful sales organisations have a sales culture and environment driven from the top.

So what should you look out for?
Here are 10 symptoms of an environment working against the sales organisation

1. When setting next year’s targets are the targets based on an economic analysis or just a desire/need for growth?
2. Do the targets align to the strategic requirements - i.e. can you hit target based on selling legacy product as opposed to the strategic focus?
3. If senior management meet clients, do they make promises and then fail to follow them through?
4. Are management closed to a business case of “give me more sales resource and I will exceed target”.
5. Are you regularly asked for updates to forecasts and reports beyond the pre-agreed frequency?
6. Are you scolded for forecasting below target - even if it is an accurate forecast?
7. Are you allowed to "no-bid" on opportunities with key accounts?
8. Is everyone looking to blame sales for a shortfall in revenue - including marketing, senior managers and anyone else with an opinion?
9. Does it always feel like no matter what you achieve it will never be enough?
10. Is short-termism the order of the day and all long term strategic planning goes out of the window?

If that is how it is in your sales organisation then don’t think you are alone. We witness this over and over. Rather than trying to understand what is really causing shortfalls in revenue targets it always becomes the fault of the sales force.

Our experience shows that the environment for the sales team is made up of myriad of elements that can be causing you to miss target.

Yes, sales capability and execution may be an issue. But issues such as the macro economy, the internal processes that either help or hinder effective selling, the strategic focus of the senior decision makers in the organisation and the current cultural “feel” of the organisation will all influence the performance of the sales team.

So what should you take away?
This is a cultural, managerial issue. If fairly senior people believe there is a problem but that they cannot influence or change anything then blaming the sales force is an easy option. A clear, long term, strategic focus with some structural stability and an open culture of clear and honest communication is, in our view, the only way to bring a semblance of belief into the sales force. This has to be aligned with an environment that enables the sales force to sell rather than it being an obstacle.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our Helping business drive sales document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help you create and manage your solution assessments enabling you to ensure your sales organisation is maximising the opportunities your portfolio creates.

Product quizzes - Do they help or hinder your sales team?

Many of our clients ask us to help them run sales team assessment programmes that include a quiz on the teams understanding of their offering. We are regularly asked how best to write the questions for these quizzes, so we thought we would share our thoughts with everyone.

This blog item is designed to provide ideas as to how to approach the creation of a product/solution/proposition quiz that not only tests sales people knowledge but also helps drive effective sales engagement.

What is the objective of the quiz?
As with all objectives think about what is the measurable outcome of doing the test, how will this ensure your sales team can effectively position your offer, qualify an opportunity and drive it towards a successful outcome?

Too often the sole objective of the quiz is to test that the sales person has read (and maybe understood) the sales collateral. This usually results in the questions being more focussed on the content of the collateral than the value of the content itself and how you use it to drive the sale.

We would recommend that the objective of the quiz is “to ensure that the sales person understands what customer problems the offer is designed to address, the key features of the offer, what the advantages of these features are and how they address the customer need, how to qualify the opportunity, the value your solution offers the customer and how you differentiate versus the competition”

Who is your target audience?
If you take our recommendation that the quiz needs to be linked to the sales process, then you have to consider “can I have one quiz for all?” There may be specific levels of detail that you would expect specific roles to have, if this is the case make the quiz role specific.

Try to avoid asking questions that add no value to the role, this will only devalue the quiz in the eyes of the participants.

How should you structure your questions?
If you have a specific sales approach (uncover need, position offer against need, qualify offer addresses need, validate customer sees value in addressing need with your offer, negotiate to a close) then use these steps as the structure of your quiz. This will then help your sales people see the value in the content you are providing and ensure they can use the content at the right time in the sales cycle.

Any structure you use should be relevant to your stated objective. If you need to do a more technical quiz your structure could be around, existing environment, specific technology needs, what the customer must have in place, how to check solution will work, etc.

The golden rules for questions
Remember you are asking a sales person to invest their time in answering a set of questions, something they probably have no desire to do, therefore the questions must be seen to be adding value:

• All questions should be relevant and add value to the sales process for the sales team
• Avoid pure pieces of information. i.e. 87.3% of people think.....
• Focus on the impact of the information contained in the collateral / training - “If the customer has the following need xxxx, which of the features address that need....”
• Avoid ambiguity in the questions - do not have any answers which are answered “all of the above”
• Group questions together around the key feature/advantage groupings that differentiate your people and your offer and link these to customer needs
• Do not ask purely factual questions based on content somewhere in the collateral - answers should not be a test on “have you read the collateral”
• Do not feel obliged to ask 20 questions just to have the target of 20 questions, if you can only find 18 relevant questions, only have 18!
• Sales people get bored easily, keep the structure of the question simple. Also ensure the quiz does not last more than 20 minutes
• You can base questions around a customer scenario, you could even add sound and animation to explain the situation.
• If you do any form of ranking questions make it an even number - on self assessment people are most likely to go for the middle answer, so do not give them a middle option

What happens at the end of the quiz?
Have you thought about the payback to the sales rep for investing their time?

If you are positioning the quiz as a test, you can have a pass/fail, but show them where they failed and what the impact of this will be to them - what they need to improve on to ensure they can sell successfully. As an alternative to a straight pass or fail you could have target scores for each section of the quiz and show the results against a target score. This could then be translated into a RAG result.

There should be some value to the sales rep when they see the results. Consider creating some words that explains why each section is important and how best to use the available content to help drive the sale

Point the user at content that could help them improve their knowledge

Have you thought about what happens if the sales rep falls below the required standard, do they re-sit the quiz, if so how quickly, is it the same set of questions, what happens if they fail again?

Success relies on effective communications
The quiz is likely to be part of an ongoing programme associated with the product/solution/proposition. Have you positioned its role?

Communication is key at the very least you need to:

• Explain the objective of the quiz and the benefit to the sales rep
• Position what you expect the sales rep to do
• When the quiz starts / ends
• How they should prepare
• What happens if they do not do the quiz in the required time frame
• Impact of pass/fail
• Communicate with sales managers their role in the process - they will make or break the quiz as they are the people who will ensure their people take it seriously
• Explain what happens after the quiz, what are you doing with the information, how will it affect the individual sales rep
• Do not rely solely on broadcast information, include some personal communications. If you have a strict timetable, personal phone calls to the sales reps (or managers) encouraging laggards to complete the quiz are invaluable.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our Helping business drive sales document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help you create and manage your solution assessments enabling you to ensure your sales organisation is maximising the opportunities your portfolio creates.

Are you hiding behind e-mail and missing the chance to communicate?

During the last week we have helped a client to solve a problem between them and one of their suppliers (not us!). The core of the problem being a lack of expectation management by the supplier and an assumption by the client that everyone would understand the nuances in their e-mails.

E-mail is a good tool for certain things but a poor “instant” communication tool
E-mail is great in certain circumstances, but e-mail is a poor tool for communicating when an issue needs discussion. The people who send the e-mail assume that the recipients actually read it, and beyond that understand what is trying to be communicated. The recipient skim reads it and takes it for what it is a quick way of sending a message, they take everything at face value, something which can lead to disaster.

Just discuss with your colleagues and friends how many issues have been caused by sending an e-mail that has not been thought through. Let's not forget the number of e-mails that have been replied all, forgetting that some of the information may not have been appropriate for all recipients to see.

E-mail is not a letter
If we all took the same time and effort to compose our e-mails as we do if we ever write a letter, then some, but not all of the problems would be reduced. At the very least there would be greater clarity in the message we are trying to deliver. People would spend more time composing their e-mails, clearly thinking about what they want to say and checking the e-mail before they send it. But then that wouldn't be e-mail and we wouldn't be able to use our Blackberries and iPhones.

So what is e-mail?
It is a quick means of sending an update, a request for information, a broadcast communications tool. It is not an effective one-to-one communications tool.

If you want an effective one-to-one communications tool, the killer app is talk to the person either face to face or on the phone or via an instant messaging application!

In fact if you are looking for a quick update mechanism you may find Instant Message or even Skype's messenger solution better than e-mail. At least you know if they are on-line, and can know if they received the message because you can ask for an immediate response.

So how can e-mail cause problems?
Let me take you back to the issue that I described at the start. The supplier had been carrying out a piece of work, fixed price to a deadline. As is always the case there had been scope creep and the supplier thought he was due additional money, so he sent an e-mail. The scope creep was also causing a delay to the project so the customer e-mailed a response to the suppliers e-mail not addressing the money issue, but focussing on the likely delay of the project. Anarchy ensued, the supplier thought the customer was trying to rip him off, "why won't he reply to my issue over money" and the customer was losing faith in the supplier, "this project is running late and I cannot accept any delay”. In both cases they were focussing on the personal issue and getting emotional over it.

The e-mails were part of the problem as both parties thought they had brought up a clear issue that needs to be addressed, and both parties had ignored the other’s issue.

So what fixed the problem?
A 30 minute meeting solved the problem, both parties met, articulated their issue, understood the others issue and came to an amicable agreement. They also recognised that this problem was in part caused by the use of e-mail as opposed to traditional voice communication, talking. 90% of the issues were due to poor communications between both parties and the associated lack of understanding.

It is a great example of Stephen R. Covey’s fifth habit of Highly Effective People - “Seek to understand first then to be understood”.

But what has this got to do with sales people?
How many sales people hide behind e-mail? When asked the question, "when did you last speak to the client?", the answer given is "I sent them an e-mail last week". When asked "what is the status of the opportunity?" how many people say "I am waiting for a response to my e-mail".

If we truly believe people buy from people, then why do so many sales people think that e-mail is a satisfactory means of communication. You need to speak to their customers.

What can be the impact of moving away from e-mail?
One of our major accounts is the EMEA division of a major PC hardware vendor, their people are spread all over Europe. There are lots of e-mails flying around, but if we need to sort anything out we have a very simple process.

• We are all on Skype so we can see who is on-line
• If we need to speak to the European Marketing Director we send a Skype message asking for a phone call, usually to agree the way forward
• If the discussion is going to be complicated we have a quick call and agree a face-to-face meeting.
• E-mail is used solely to validate the outcomes of calls/meetings, share updates with a wide audience and collaborate on key documents.

How can you use this message to improve your sales performance?
We have discussed how you plan you account activity in the past, and the topic of "customer facing time" has come up. We would suggest that you introduce the concept of "customer conversation time", allocate time in your day where you pick up the phone and speak to your accounts. You will be pleasantly surprised, not only will you reduce the likelihood of confusion, you will identify new opportunities just by speaking to people.

As an aim you should review whether it is appropriate to send an e-mail and whether you should use an alternative form of communication:

• Do you need an immediate response from your communications? - If so call or Instant Message them
• Do you need to validate that the recipient(s) have understood the key messages of your e-mail? If so call or arrange a conference call - you can ask them "have you understood this?"
• Does your e-mail contain bad news? - Call them and personally deliver the news, it will be easier to manage expectations.
• Do you want to get something off your chest? - write the e-mail and then delete it, you will feel better just by writing it down. If it is a serious issue speak to the person, don't hide behind the e-mail.

Do you want to know more?
Either read our Helping business drive sales document or contact either Mark Savinson orFred Nelsonand let Accredit help to enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your portfolio creates.

I can't be asked to write a blog on motivation

Motivation is a strange animal at the best of times. What makes us want to do something or not do something has been studied by behaviourial psychologists and business gurus for decades.

In selling the most important thing you can do is be in front of customers prospecting, asking questions, listening, finding out their problems and showing how your product can help them overcome their problem and provide them with some personal, emotional benefit.

So why do some salespeople complain when they are asked to spend more time with customers? I was recently working with a client whose senior management had set a target for customer facing time. This, in my view, was not a difficult target to achieve but it seemed to be causing a problem for the salespeople who saw it as arbitrary and burdensome. Fancy that a sales force complaining that having to be in front of customers was a problem for them!

To understand the motivation behind this I did some digging. What I uncovered was an emotional set of issues linked to performance management and a difficult set of targets that were stretching in a difficult trading period of economic hardship and uncertainty.

So what did I conclude?

1. Motivation is a personal thing that is based on your own internal needs aligned in selling normally to an external reward (e.g. earning a bonus)
2. Given it is personal it is dependent on the individual adapting a set of behaviours to his/her needs
3. You can have an organisational target that is sensible and based on organisational needs but if it is not recognised by the individual as relevant to him/her then it will create friction and uncertainty and may actually demotivate
4. When people feel under pressure even the easiest of targets seem impossible to achieve

Talking to the sales managers in this organisation provided me with the opportunity to try to understand what was really happening. The managers take on what was going on was very interesting - their teams felt micro managed, resources seemed stretched after a long period of down sizing and the difficult trading and economic conditions were making their targets even more difficult to achieve

So how can you personally remain motivated when organisationally you feel everything is difficult or even virtually impossible?

1. Keep the faith. Believe in your ability to remain focussed on what you have to achieve to win business and hit your number
2. Do first things first - the important stuff like visiting customers, prospecting meetings that have purpose and outcomes and qualifying good quality opportunities comes before any reporting, spreadsheet manipulation or email chain responses
3. Have a plan and stick to it, adjusting slightly as you go, not knee jerking and changing direction every time there is a slight hitch
4. Write down your objectives and work on them every day. Understand what makes progress towards your goal of hitting your number.

Being positive and having a set of goals will completely obliterate any issues you may have about target customer facing time. In fact you will find that your only concern will be fitting in all of the customer facing time!

So next time you are worried about being motivated to hit your customer facing time think:-

• what actions am I taking to achieve my sales target?
• how can I get in front of more decision making customers?
• what coaching is my sales manager giving me to help keep me focussed and motivated?
• have I reviewed my goals today and ensured I am focussed on achieving those?
• what can I do to fit in more customer facing time?

Motivation in selling should be about doing everything you can to provide benefit to your customers. You can only "sell " benefit if you understand your customers needs. You can only understand your customer's needs if you ask them great questions, listen intently and get underneath their emotional demands. You can only get underneath their emotional demands by getting out and talking to them.

Selling activities should be focussed on 3 things -

1. preparing for customer meetings

2. meeting and presenting your ideas based on listening to your customer needs

3. following up to progress opportunities

Everything else is noise and fluff (before you cry foul, writing sales call reports is part of following up )

If you are not motivated enough to visit customers as often as you can then you are probably in the wrong job. Maybe you should do something else - I dunno how about becoming a hermit?

Do we want people who "can" or people who "do"

This will be a short blog as both Fred and I should have been on holiday this week, the good news is that we have been very busy so holidays have been put on hold in order to focus on our clients. The even better news is that this has given me the opportunity to use my new iPad to write this blog. I have only had my iPad 2 weeks and I am just coming to the important decision, toy or useful business accessory. I will let you know in a few weeks.

During the last week we have had a number of conversations with companies on the subject of assessments. They can be neatly broken down into the following issue. What do we want to know, do we identify those people who have the attributes to be a sales person or those people who are selling well.

What is interesting is that the answer depends on who we are talking to. If the lead is HR then they start with the attribute question, "do we have people we can invest our training in who will become world class sales people?" If, on the other hand, we are speaking to the Sales Director, there is a far more pragmatic question, "are my people able to sell in the way I wish and if there are gaps how do I coach the people to improve?"

Attribute or approach
There is not necessarily a right answer, they are both useful. The key question is what are you trying to find out? Here at Accredit we believe that we come from the pragmatic end of the scale. If you have a sales team in place you need to find out what you must do to maximize their performance. This requires an assessment of how they are actually selling and then building a program to address the identified issues (which could of course be environmental or poor messaging). If on the other hand you are looking to overhaul your sales organization a review of their attributes is a valid exercise.

Avoid letting attribute over-ride the doing
Our experience shows that a well motivated team of people who are selling well will always outperform a team of people who have the attributes but are not motivated. Strong and clear leadership is of course essential. The pragmatic approach not only identifies how people sell, but it reveals the state of leadership, especially by showing what they focus on and why.

Warm bodies are still better than no bodies
The other issue we have come across of late is the fact that many of the organizations who are heavily focussing on attribute assessment are linking this to a re-evaluation of their sales organization, a polite way of saying have we got the right people and if not how do we "lose" them. What they often forget is that you still need people to talk to customers and an average sales person talking to 10 customers will always deliver more revenue than no sales person talking to those customers. Again pragmatism must rule, all assessments must be undertaken in association with the strategic objective of the company, the revenue target. It is not purely an HR issue, it is a sales issue.

What do we recommend?
Accredit is recognized for it's pragmatic approach to sales enablement, as such we will always start by focussing on the "can they do?" elements. However, when it comes to recruitment and also talent management we recognize the value of attributes. In fact we do partner with an assessment company who focus on this type of assessment. The difference is that we recommend this approach on a target audience as opposed to the whole sales community. It is also worth highlighting that if you are relying on self assessment for attributes, a key attribute of a successful sales person is confidence, therefore they will exaggerate their abilities!

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact either Mark Savinson orFred Nelson and let Accredit help to enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your portfolio creates.

Does everyone have an emotional link to doing a good job

This week we were due to focus on Resources, however during the last week we have recognised an environmental trait that appears to be having a major impact on some of the sales organisations we are working with. The core of this issue is "is it better to have people who expect to be financially rewarded for doing the job, or to have those who have an emotional driver that makes them want to do a good job?"


On the face of it this may appear to be a stupid question as western society has built its commercial success around a reward culture. In fact everyone agrees that a key factor in creating successful sales enablement is a commission plan that drives activities in the right places. So why are we concerning ourselves with this emotional link?

Do you have a contractor led environment?
As a result of the recession many companies have drastically reduced headcount, which has left gaps in their capabilities, which they fill with contractors - people on short-term day rate contracts. This in itself is not an issue but it is for some creating an environment where success is "doing the job I am paid for" as opposed to creating an environment built around success for the company and colleagues. Just imagine what an Apple Store would be like if it was full of contractors who did not have a passion for Apple, it would be just like many other stores - soulless.

So how does this impact the sales environment?
In some cases the contractor mentality is increasing the stove pipe approach to sales enablement. Lots of standalone initiatives, each of which are built on good intentions, but unfortunately are all pulling in slightly different directions. Too often the contractors are put in a position where they are told what they are expected to do (think micro-management) and it is made clear "this is what you are paid to deliver". As such the contractor adds no value, which is frustrating for some and acceptable for others.

The net result is that this stove-pipe initiative approach encourages the sales community to ignore all the initiatives - "if you duck under this initiative don't worry because there will be another one coming along shortly".

How can you ensure you create a positive environment?
Clearly we are not saying "don't use contractors", that would be naive. Instead we recommend that at a management level you have to work even harder to ensure that everything is connected. You have to articulate the end objective and be clear how all the workstreams combine to achieve that objective. If you can do this you increase your chances of success.

Secondly, we suggest you review how you work with your contractors. Have you asked them for a fixed price for the work, focussing them on what you want them to achieve as opposed to "how many days will I be paid for?" If they can achieve your objective quicker, even if the price is fixed, that is clearly a success.

Thirdly, you have to get the contractors to collaborate. If you do not, they will compete for budget and not provide you with a joined up end-to-end solution. Instead you could end up with "world class" initiatives that overlap and confuse the sales community and therefore not achieving the overall strategic objective.

Who controls the answer?
It is important to remember that the sales messages, environment, tools and target sales behaviours are all part of a sales enablement process. They are not separate initiatives but part of a whole solution. They will only be successful if your customer, i.e. the sales team, use them and sell more!

Senior management must own the objectives, not the contractors (even if you out-task), as they are the people who should have the emotional link to solving the problem. But remember, if you are looking for contractors who add value then you need to find those who have an emotional driver to improving selling, (be careful they can be evangelical in their passion and highly opinionated). If you focus them on the end-objective they will be driven to make a difference, this will be reflected in their desire to use project pricing as opposed to day-rate.

If you would rather have bodies who do as they are told, that is fine. Remember that you have to have clarity as to what you want them to do and be prepared for things to take longer than anticipated, you are paying them by the day after all!

Let's return to the environment
As we stated at the beginning, there are two types of contractors; those who are paid to do a job and those who emotionally want to do a good job. We would suggest that when it comes to finding leaders of behavioural change you should always look for the latter. Organisationally if you can create this emotional tie then you will be even more successful, but do not think this removes the need for rewarding success. I am sure Apple pay their employees even though they are so passionate.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you feel our views on contracting in to solve key strategic issues are of interest we would love to hear your views. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start to drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help to enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your portfolio creates.

How can we ensure our sales people are capable of delivering?

Firstly apologies for the delay in this blog, as we move into the holiday season we are having to update blogs via mobile broadband, in the quiet periods when our wives do not notice we are working. In fact part of this blog has been updated via an iPad.

We will keep the blogs short for the next 2 weeks, so please stay with us until normal service is resumed.

The trinity continued
The third element of our trinity of key components of sales success, after Messages and Environment (which we have covered over the past couple of weeks), is Resources.

By Resources we mean the sales people in our sales teams - whether they be inside sales reps on the desk or face to face account team members and specialist/technical sales people.

If we get the Messages "sales ready" and the internal Environment (processes and systems) right then neither is worth anything without a well trained, highly motivated, highly capable team of sales people. It goes without saying really doesn't it? That said we often see many examples where the sales people - the most important element of all - appear poorly trained, of low motivation and are rarely coached by their team leaders and sales managers.

Why is this? From what we have observed it is a combination of things which when mixed together do not necessarily support overall achievement of the corporate revenue and margin goals

We regularly see:-

1. Little or no relevant training on current and planned proposition portfolios
2. Too much focus on portfolio and not enough focus on customers.
3. Low levels of motivation
4. Little or no 1:1 coaching of individuals by their sales managers
5. Lack of clarity around what the focus of their activity should be.

The answer is not "send them on a training course"

Clearly a well trained sales force will be more effective than an untrained sales force. But our experience shows that just by training sales people in generic sales skills is no guarantee of success.

Training is very good at ensuring that sales people (and managers) have the requisite skills to be able to sell. It is important to remember that the training must focus on the appropriate skills for the market you are operating in. Over the last few years we have seen an obsession with the move towards solution or consultative selling, with an ever growing number of sales methodologies promising the golden bullet to selling. However, the focus on the methodology almost undermines the fundamental aspect of successful selling - addressing the needs of the customer! To-date we have never seen a tender document that includes the sales methodology that must be used, and I know of no customer who approaches a sales person and bases their decision to buy on whether they are using the latest "closing technique".

The most effective sales training is based on firstly identifying the most effective way of engaging with your clients. If you are in a transactional environment (where the customer comes with a defined requirement and is looking for someone to fulfil that requirement) then training must be focussed around customer service, speed of response and the ability to up-sell and cross-sell (do you want fries with that or would you like to go large). If on the other hand your clients are looking for you to solve a problem, then you need a consultative sales approach with a focus on uncovering need, addressing the need, proving the value of your proposed approach and negotiating to a close.

In both of the examples, the customer is at the centre of the sale. All selling is customer centric, and your training solution should be too. This is of course not a radical suggestion as, if you have read the previous blogs on the trinity of message, environment and resources, all of our comments can be summarised as "put the customer at the centre of all your thinking, they are the ones who buy!"

Moving from sales training to engagement enablement

We are not a lone voice here, we are currently working with a large mobile communications company and they have launched an up-skilling programme for their sales people. What is interesting is that the suppliers (they have gone for a consortium approach) they have selected are using a blended approach that uses e-learning to deliver the base level skills and then face-to-face sessions that are based on using the skills to engage with clients. For this approach they start with role play and then move onto to monitored live engagement.

What is different about this approach is that all the focus is on engaging with customers and selling something, and not the methodology itself. This enables the suppliers to directly link the programme to an ROI (business won), as opposed to relying on some form of "test" at the end to see what people have learnt.

This approach, in our opinion, is the ideal start point to training a sales team as it ticks the following boxes.

• Focus is on doing the job and not a methodology
• Everything is in the context of selling the portfolio
• It is customer centric as it focusses on engagement (doing) and not theory
• Results are measurable, it is tied to selling something
• It can be linked to a sustainable approach
• Sales managers can continue focussing on the doing

Suppliers alone cannot solve the problem

Training can only show people the most effective way of selling their portfolio. It is up to the organisation to ensure that best practice is used every day. This neatly takes us on to motivation and coaching which we will examine next week.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you feel our thoughts on any aspect of the "trinity" are of interest we would love to hear your views. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start to drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help to enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your portfolio creates.

How can we ensure our internal Environment enables our selling activities

Over the last couple of weeks we have posted on what we at Accredit Ltd call the three key internal components of sales success - Message, Environment and Resources.

This week we will focus on Environment.

In essence what we are talking about here are the internal environmental issues that lead to sales success - Process, Motivation and Support/Culture. Is it easy for our sales force to sell and our customers to buy our products and solutions? Are our sales people motivated to sell our portfolio and is the culture supportive of great selling habits?


Is it easy to sell what we sell?

This is a key question because it addresses the needs of the seller and the buyer. What we mean by this is that if our internal processes are aligned to ensuring that selling and buying are "easy" then we are likely to sell more and have more satisfied customers. For example if you sell a fairly complex or technical solution you probably need your salespeople to have access to very competent, expert project managers or technical specialists that can support the sales guys through the selling process. If you make it hard for sales to get access to the technical guys then it makes it harder for them to sell and harder for customers to get their technical concerns addressed. If the order handling process is complex or fragmented then the same applies - difficulty for sales and customers instead of ease and smooth professionalism.


Are our sales people motivated to sell our portfolio?
This is not just about payplan and bonus which is, of course, vital to get right when designing a sales remuneration package for a particular campaign, product portfolio or annual sales plan. What is just as important as money in our view are the "softer" motivational issues such as are related to the "ease" of selling we discussed above. If we make it too hard, sales people will be turned off. All of us in sales want it to be as easy as possible to sell; if it is not and we can find another way of earning our bonus then we will be drawn to what is easy.


What is our support culture?

Another 'soft" motivator that is absolutely vital and is something we have blogged about many times over the past year is sales management - how are we managed, led, coached. Is it mostly stick and little carrot? Do we feel happy in what we are doing? Do we feel valued? Are we regularly coached? Are we helped in finding solutions to problems when we are struggling to find answers and to do our best?

Having an internal environment where sales people feel valued is vital, where they can rely on processes and systems to help make the sales "easy". Easy does not mean easy in terms of being allowed to give away discounts; it is more about how the processes enable the order handling, contract signing, service handling etc. to run effectively for both the internal stakeholders and of course your customers.

We asked a sales support team recently what one word describes your organisational culture at present - their answer was damning. "Dictatorial"

This is a very successful major corporate sales team with a history of achievement. The last 2 years have been difficult (just like it has for many companies and sales teams). Culturally when the going gets tough this organisation has fallen into the trap of what we call "blamestorming" - in other words let's point the finger and demand change and improvement in the way a dictator would. The language is typical of organisations in panic mode - "The sales force need more training on products, they are not selling enough, it must be a lack of training". "These sales guys are rubbish" is the sort of thing we have heard over the past few weeks.

As the saying goes "when the going gets tough, the tough get going". In our view that does not mean shouting and pointing fingers. A culturally mature, level headed sales organisation has a leadership focus on understanding why things are not going so well, recognising the issues, thinking through some potential solutions and then executing and measuring the most appropriate solutions. Being "dictatorial" and demanding instant change, more training, more reporting etc. does not solve anything.

Reviewing sales activity and understanding what is going on before leaping into "solutions" is the mature, culturally grown up way of moving forward.

Three things to think about
So our recommendation is whether times are good or bad regularly look at how your selling environment is working.

1. Make it easy to sell. Align processes and systems to enabling selling so that all internal resources and your customers can easily understand what is happening, what is on offer, what will happen next and when service will be delivered.
2. Make sure your sales force is motivated. Motivation is about money for sure but it is also about support systems, enabling the whole selling process to work smoothly and having systems that work for the sales teams.
3. Make your culture one of support and growth. In good times selling seems easy. When times are tough that is when we find out if our support systems for our people and our culture is strong enough to get us through.

An effective message and a sales-oriented environment are just the bedrock

If we get the basics right we remove the excuses, next we will examine the pointy end of the sales organisation; your people.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you are not happy with your approach to your Environment feel free to contact Accredit. We can give you quick feedback just by placing a comment on this blog, or we can work with you to ensure you are best placed to start drive the activities that will help you be successful.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact either Mark Savinson or Fred Nelson and let Accredit help enable your sales organisation to maximise the opportunities your product set creates.