Business Works Consulting - A Rob Malec Company: November 2009

Monday, November 2, 2009

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Ideas in this posting will help you: Make Money, and Improve Your Competitive Position.

Coach to his team: “The big game is tomorrow. We really need to win this one. I know we haven’t practiced for a year, but we don’t have time to practice! Our schedule is too hectic!!

Is this coach setting his team up to succeed? No way. Would you run your team, or your business, this way? Of course you wouldn’t. Or would you?

Sharpen the Saw is Stephen Covey’s 7th Habit. In his seminal book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ he describes it as the Habit that “surrounds the other habits...it is the habit that makes all the others possible.”

How sharp is your saw? Take this brief quiz. Score yourself 10 points for each ‘Yes’, 5 points for each ‘Kinda-sorta’, and 0 points for each ‘No’.

1. In the last 3 months I / my team has received coaching or mentoring focused on developing some aspect of our business skill set
2. In the last 6 months I / my team has devoted 1 full day to work on improving or developing some aspect of our business skill set
3. In the last 12 months I / my team has devoted at least ½ a day to business planning activities

Congratulations. You are now fully aware of how well you are sharpening your saw!

Where to begin your saw sharpening? The answer lies in the three questions above. Pick what you want to practice or get better at. Put aside a full day to practice it [this is an investment in time whose return is in dollars]. Create an agenda, and go to it. There are consultants of all stripes who can help you with this process if you wish.

I recently made an investment of one full day to work ‘on’ my business and my skills. At the start of the day my mind was on the million other things I felt I should be doing. At the end of that day, and into the next, and the next, my mind was on the great ideas for my business I generated as I sharpened my saw.

So, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? A little story for you...A man on the street in New York stops a passer by and asks, “Excuse me, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The passer by [who just happens to be a world renowned musician] replies, “Practice, practice, practice.”

Tips & Tactics for Leaders

Taking your team out of the field for sales skill improvement work is tough to do. "There are sales to make," you cry. This is true. A thought for you then. Would you choose to have your team go out on sales calls for a day [5 to 8 sales calls] and risk the chance of repeating past mistakes in each of those calls? Or, would you prefer they take 60 minutes [the length of one typical sales call] and get prepped to knock the ball out of the park in the remaining 4-7 calls that day?

As a leader of a sales team do you ever find that you are too busy to do the leadership stuff? Would you rather put the leadership duties to the side and focus on closing deals? Don't do it. I have seen this approach pull sales team morale down, leave staff feeling their ship is 'rudderless', and compromise the credibility of the leader. Putting this 'Important' thing on the back burner only leads to it becoming an 'Urgent' thing later.

Are you a Canadian company of under 50 employees? If you want to provide some training to your folks FOR FREE here is an offer for you. There is a government grant program that provides funds for training of staff. There is an application process to follow that is quite simple. Funds are limited so you would need to act soon. If you are interested to learn more, please contact me. I have been through the process and tell you all you need to know.

Want a quick window into the sales call effectiveness of your team? During your regular coaching session ask them to list the top 3 Buyer Needs and the corresponding Five Reasosns value the Buyer wants to realize by having each Need met for every sales call they conducted that week. Assessing the quality and quantity of the data within their responses will allow you to easily diagnose the effectiveness with which they are selling.

Turning over sales talent is no fun. As managers and leaders we want to give our people every chance to succeed, [and the prospect of facing the hiring process is not a pleasant one], so we hang on. The key is to know when you are at the end of the road and have given a consistently poor sales performer 'every chance'. I find that companies tend to hang on to poor sales performers at least six months too long. I believe this does a disservice to the individual in question, and the company as well. The individual stays in a job they know they are doing poorly at just to pay the bills [which cannot make them feel great], and the company pays six months of salary for non achievement of sales goals. When faced with this situation plan an exit strategy that maintains respect for the individual, and allows all parties to get to a place of happiness.

If you decide to invest in a CRM solution, be sure to invest in a strategic twelve month implementation plan, and stick to the plan! Create a steering commitee to make decisions on data entry protocols, provide direction to management on how to use it to manage their business, and supply training to the sales team wherever they may reside. Sadly, I rarely see this done. Coincidentally, most CRM implementations I have seen after the fact have been less than a success.

How much sales skills practice has your team done lately? How much of it was video recorded to allow for a meaningful debrief with each person, aimed at spotting their skill strengths and opportunites for growth? Used appropriately this is a powerful way to improve sales skills.

When reviewing sales results with your people, also review the imperical data that illustrates the activities that generated those results. This connects activities to results produced, and allows for tweaking the mix. If you don't measure it, you can't manage it.

Monday, November 2, 2009

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Tips & Tactics for Leaders

Blog Archive