Target, aim, shoot, not shoot, aim, target

Last week we looked at the key components of setting targets, this week we are looking beyond the physical number in the target and more towards how you plan to achieve the target.

There are two key aspects we are going to cover:

• The organisational roadmap for sales success
• The personal tactics to achieve success

Success is not all about the sales people, failure is not all their fault either.

At its simplest your sales target is an expression of what good likes, in a monetary sense. Too often organisations then use the monetary value as the sole measure of success or failure without looking at the root causes and therefore what can be done to turn failure into success.

The concept of "target, aim, shoot" is all about having an objective (your target), individual tactics within that objective (what you aim at) and execution (shooting). Most people who solely measure the financial results, focus on the execution (did sales achieve its number) without considering whether they were aiming at the right targets.

We regularly encounter sales teams, who, when there is an issue, treat performance management as "fire and hire". We contend that they need to look broader.

Assuming the targets make sense, then organisations need to look at the three components of a successful sales team

• The message - Marketing works very hard to create a compelling message, or value proposition that they believe will sell. All sales have to do is to tell everyone that message, go out and pitch it. But is this the best way?:
• Do you have a "sales ready message" - What is the customer's problem? What questions should sales ask? How does our offer address problems? How are we better than the competition?
• Are your sales people inventing their own messages?
• When did you last listen to how your messages are delivered to prospects and customers?
• The environment - Are you sales friendly, or do you inadvertently raise barriers to sales, are your sales people always inventing excuses and arguing that things need to be changed?
• Sales people will always take the path of least resistance, is that path the one you want them to take?
• Are you measuring the things that will drive the behaviours that will ensure you achieve target?
• Is it easy to order and deliver your solution, if you allow "tailored solutions" how easy is it to create, price and deliver a solution?
• Resources - Remember sales people are there to sell, sales managers are there to manage and your Sales Director directs.
• Do you have a plan that the Sales Director can build a strategy against?
• Do the Managers know what they have to deliver and what tactics need to be employed?
• Are your Sales People equipped to deliver against the tactics?

So what does all of this mean organisationally? If your target requires growth via acquisition, then you need to look at each of the components and check that they are supportive of your strategy

1. Are your messages acquisition or retention messages?
2. Does your environment allow you to make the decisions you need to win new business - How prepared are you to buy market share from your competitors?
3. Can you grow the market?
4. Are your resources ready for and capable of acquisition selling? - If you have made sales people redundant based on their achievement against target, have you lost many of your acquisition sales people and have you too many retention account managers?

Can your people show you their roadmap to success?

In previous postings we have discussed the concept of a personal business plan (click here to download a copy), and a key component of that was the sales plan. Without a clearly articulated plan, sales people are relying on luck to achieve their goals. This plan is not just "I will achieve £xx this year", instead it is a breakdown of the tactics that will be undertaken to ensure success:

• Sales activities:
• Sales funnel - Number of Suspects, Prospects, Ratios of forecast to actuals
• Key activities - Number of calls, meetings, quotes, etc.
• Financial breakdown - Revenue, margin, etc
• Business Mix

You should expect all sales people to have a plan, which you can track against throughout the year. If you do not believe the plan, challenge them and get your managers to coach them to be successful.

Where possible, do not give your people the plan, give them the Target, best practice around Aiming, but let them decide how they Shoot. Review how much they have shot on a regular basis and help them to adjust if necessary by looking at the external and internal environments.

Be prepared to ask for help

If you are not happy with your roadmap, whether you have the right resource mix, or how to ensure your people have effective personal plans, 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 the financial year in an effective manner.

Next week the client's perspective of their new year

We will examine how you have to take into account how your clients behave when building your plans.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document, download the "Personal Business Plan" or contact mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com and Mark can take you through more detail.

If you don't reach for the sky you will not get off the ground

Many of our clients are starting to tell us of their sales targets for the next financial year, and the good news is that they are all predicting growth. However, what is interesting is the approaches they have used to defining the targets, so we thought we would share some of the key approaches with you.

Targets are self fulfilling
The first lesson of setting targets is that they are self-fulfilling. Experience shows that if you set a low growth target you will only achieve low growth, if you set high growth you are more likely to achieve high growth. This is due to the fact that sales teams moderate their behaviour around their targets as opposed to having a sense of responsibility to their employer and always trying to achieve the maximum revenue.

How often have you heard a sales person say "I have achieved my target in that area so I do not have to worry about it now".

Product mix is key
Targets drive behaviour in a sales team, if you need to sell a range of solutions then these must be separated out in the targets. Remember sales people always take the path of least resistance and if they can achieve a pure revenue target by focusing in one area they will.

There are many cases of businesses struggling to sell new offerings, or to move into new markets, this is invariably due to the sales team not focussing sufficiently. This can only be overcome by having specific targets which will drive the focus.

Retain, Acquire, or Develop
Targets are not just a number, they are a definition of how you expect your revenue to achieved. Are you looking to grow by selling more to your existing customers, or are you going to grow by acquiring new customers and retaining your existing ones.

But do you have the right sales team?
We have many customers who have decided that having spent the last 18 months defending revenue now is the time to focus on winning new customers. However, during the last 18 months these same businesses have reduce the size of their sales forces and in many cases culled their "new business" sales people who were not achieving target. They are now left them with account managers who successfully protected business in their existing accounts. So who is going to acquire new customers?

Yes, but how much will I earn?
Sales people are not sophisticated people, the reason we are in sales is that we like to earn more money than everyone else, which is how it should be. If you want to drive my behaviours, impact my wallet.

We are not looking to create complex commission plans, but if you want a specific mix of business then it needs to be reflected in the commission plan. The most successful plans limit my ability achieve OTE (On Target Earnings) by stating that I have to sell a specific mix of products, I cannot achieve OTE just by hitting revenue targets by selling one product. If sales people want to earn more than OTE then again this can only be achieved by over achieving in the target areas, it is these that drive the commission accelerators.

Margin or Revenue?
Clearly it is margin that businesses need to be successful, and if there is any chance that your sales team could sell loss making revenue and still achieve OTE then you have to consider moving to margin based targets (or change your sales management).

Margin based targets only work if it is easy to calculate margin. If calculating the margin becomes too much of an overhead to the sales team it will fall into the "too hard" category and become a disincentive to selling.

On a personal basis I am a fan of margin based targets as this ensures that we only sell profitable business, however there are times when we make a strategic decision to by market share and then we have to pay sales people on revenue.

Communicate the targets early
It is easy to fall into the trap of trying to create a complex set of targets and then tinkering around the edges before you announce them. Please remember that without targets being communicated the sales force will sit back and wait. Do not create a vacuum as in a vacuum nothing happens.

We have a client who regularly announces their targets in the second month of the financial year, they constantly appeared to be surprised that in the first month sales are low!

Next week building a roadmap for a successful year
We will examine how you have to define a clear roadmap for your sales and marketing organisation to ensure you have a successful 2011.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com and Mark can take you through more detail.

Let the madness begin - April is just around the corner - sell, sell, sell

As we come to the end of another "interesting" financial year, most of our clients have that glazed look in their eyes associated with trying to end the year in style.

We thought it would be useful over the next 4 weeks to examine the important things we should all be focussing on:

• Winning the winnable business
• Setting the right targets for next year
• Building the roadmap for a successful year
• The client's perspective of their new year

Winning the winnable business

The big challenge for all of us sales people is to remain focussed as our managers and directors keep asking "how are you doing?", "have you closed xxx yet?" As an aide memoire we thought we would give you our top tips to closing out the year.

1. Vigorously qualify the client
• Do you have a winning offer?
• Is it really compelling enough for them to say "yes please"?
• Do they need to make a decision now?
• Can you meet their delivery timescales?
2. Vigorously qualify your processes
• Can take the order in the timeframe (Ts&Cs, set up as client, etc.)
• Understand what decisions you can make and what you need to refer to a higher authority
• How quickly can you get a decision from your higher authority?
3. Can you financially engineer?
• Does your customer need to buy quickly (use up 2009/10 budget)?
• Can you take an order without completing all the paper work?
• Can they buy now pay later (order in this year, cash in next year)?
• Do you understand your internal revenue recognition process?
4. Do you want the order now - How desperate are you?
• Are you the only one who wants to bring the order forward?
• Can the customer use this as a negotiating point against you?
5. Forecast accurately
• Good forecasting keeps you in control of the sales cycle
• Good forecasting forces you to continually qualify your opportunities
6. Focus on the important not just what you (or your manager) perceives as urgent
• It is important that you qualify to identify what is winnable in this financial period
• It is important to agree with your manager your negotiation limits and how to deal with anything outside of this
• It is important to keep your forecast accurate
• It is important to take the order "properly" so it can be delivered
• It is not important to urgently update your manager every hour - let them review the forecast (which you have kept up-to-date)
• It is not important to urgently chase delivery every day on the status of the order. It only becomes urgent if there is a problem (did you properly qualify?)
7. Don't get desperate - you will only run around wasting energy. Focus on what you can win
8. Don't hope for a bluebird - They do come along occasionally, but you cannot base your forecast on them

Be patient - You cannot force a client to buy

It does not matter how desperate you or your manager is to win business, the client is the one who places the order.

Be patient and do the right things and if they are ready they will buy. If not, but the need is there, they will buy later.

The financial year is just the end of one week and the beginning of the next

We are not underplaying the importance of the financial year for our bonuses, the tax man, The City, etc. But ultimately it is only the end of one day. There is still business to be won the next day.

Don't fall into the trap of ignoring business to be won in April, or you will start your new year immediately behind target.

Next Week - Setting the right targets for next year

We will examine how effective target settings will drive the right behaviours and help you achieve the highest level of sales possible.

Do you want to know more?

Either read our "Helping business drive sales" document or contact mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com and Mark can take you through more detail.

So who owns the responsibility of development - The debate continues

Last week I highlighted a debate that is taking place on LinkedIn about the role of sales trainers, sales training, coaching and who ultimately owns responsibility for developing the team.

This week the debate has progressed and a number of themes have started to appear:

• Sales management - should they coach?
• Sales people - should they own their own development?
• Selling - is it a profession?

Sales Management - should they coach?

The discussion has highlighted a number of key issues:

• Do we have the right sales managers and do they know what to do?
• The contributors of the debate are clear
• "A good manager provides direction, council and encourages staff development."
• "A large percentage of the sales leaders we work with don't have the required skills (and in some cases, traits) to coach, train, develop, manage, and lead their teams. The unfortunate ones either don't know it or know it and don't look for outside help. That's why the average tenure among sales leaders is less than 2 years."
• Who does the coaching? -
• "Everyone benefits from outside professional programs -- if they are good."
• "Personally I am very passionate about training at all levels, including research, content and delivery. That said, demands on delivering all the arms of sales strategy can often mean you have to hand it over to your divisional heads. If nothing else than to contribute to their personal development too. "
• "External suppliers set the ground rules, managers have to own the delivery and behavioural change"

Clearly there is a view that sales managers, as a generalisation, lack the skills to coach and they need external help. But there is also a growing viewpoint that coaching is a fundamental part of sales management and that they should ultimately own the role of head coach, even if they delegate specific activities.

Sales People - should they own their own development?

This has already drawn out some interesting views:

• "When you look at sales as a profession, and compare that to being a surgeon, lawyer, pilot, realtor, electrician, dentist, civil engineer, and most other professions, you quickly realize that every other one has oversight, requirements, governance, or a government agency or professional standard for continuing education."
• "We do not know what the appropriate skill set for sales is, how can we expect the rep to know?"
• "I agree that the rep has primary responsibility for their own development. I've always had a significant library available of both sales books, CDs, etc. AND information about my customers' business. This includes general business and marketing topics as well."
• "I firmly believe that every rep's review must have an education accessment and plan component."

Our experience, based on recent discussions, is that more organisations are looking for sales reps to truly own their own development. The organisation will provide a range of resources, but it is up to the sales rep to use them and prove the progress they have made. Success is no longer a certificate of attendance on a course.

Selling - Is it a Profession?

There is a clear theme coming out from a number of parties about the need to make selling a profession and have its own "professional body".

• "If the company, employers and/or trainers cannot agree (or prove) what it is that makes a successful sales professional, then perhaps we will do better to try and establish a critical mass of opinion/proof via an independent body. "

There are already two "professional bodies" making a claim for the sales profession, the ISMM and IPS (Part of the CIM). Currently neither of these has made any real progress and there are other bodies trying to be set-up, e.g "The Association of Sales Professionals", but these may have the issue of being associated with a particular view point of the founder.

Do you want a professional body?

We would like to hear your views, is the answer a professional body that oversees continual professional development, that provides a recognised certification that crosses organisations and provides structure for coaching and personal development?

We are speaking to many organisations who are defining their own development structures and "certification"; should we be saying to them, "join with us to work with a professional body", or do you really care?

Please give us your view, either comment on this blog or e-mail mark.savinson@sales-accredit.com.

Help us move the debate away from training providers and towards the sales community itself.

We look forward to hearing your views.