Five Ways to Right the Course in Your Sales Organization

1. Help Your Reps Participate in Their Own Rescue

If your reps missed their numbers this quarter, they already know they need to turn things around. They know they’re behind. They don’t need someone to come in and tell them to sell more. They need to understand how they are going to right the course. 

As a sales leader, don’t yell at the scoreboard and help your managers avoid just telling their reps to "go out and sell more". Focus your salespeople on the "how". Our own Brian Walsh talks about his own experience and how to enable a sales organization to focus on the “how” throughout the quarter. Leverage his insights to provide value to your team and enable your managers to have a bigger impact on quarterly results. 

2. Assess your People

Which of your reps are succeeding and which ones are facing challenges? If your low performers aren’t making their numbers and they’re dragging the team down, then it’s likely you have a talent issue that needs to be corrected. There’s no reason to leave the success of your organization to chance. Statistical research can help predict behaviors that are needed to be successful on the job. Predictive talent analytics can help your managers:

• Focus on specific results-driven behaviors that can be observed and coached.
• Predict the actual level of performance of individual reps, in comparison to your present sales force.
• Provide immediate targets for individual and sales team development.

If your top performers aren’t making the numbers, you likely have a problem that’s bigger than your people. Your next step is to determine why they’re struggling. Read more on assessing the problem here or take our sales effectiveness assessment here. 

3. Ensure a Focus on Value

Salespeople can fall victim to the latest and greatest new product features and neglect to focus on what's most important to their buyers. As a result, they spend their sales conversations touting the new function, forgetting to focus on value. It’s a classic symptom of Seller Deficit Disorder. If your organization has released new features, make sure your sales reps are still creating value in their customer conversations in a way that maps to the customer’s required capabilities.

4. Evaluate the Sales Plan

A territory plan can be a valuable tool to assess improvement areas moving forward. An effective sales plan provides benchmarks for salespeople to hit throughout the quarter and year. It also provides the critical line-of-sight you need when your salespeople miss the mark. If the numbers aren’t where they need to be:

• Revisit the plan that was committed to at the start of the quarter.
• Determine where the gaps occurred and how they hindered achieving the number.
• Determine how to correct the problems this quarter.

5. Develop a Rhythm

A defined cadence to manage for success and mitigate problems will help you maximize your time and make you effective as a sales leader. A Management Operating Rhythm® helps you and your sales managers focus on the high-value sales activities that guide effective sales planning and execution strategies throughout the quarter. It helps your sales organization prevent the need to "catch-up". Use it to determine where your team needs to make the greatest immediate changes. Then, use it to plan your weekly, monthly, and quarterly sales operations.

Define & Align Your Best Opportunity to Improve Sales Performance for the Long Term

Don’t let another quarter go by without addressing what you know is a problem. Celebrate best practices and fix what’s broken. As you define what your sales organization may need to improve results next year, and align on the most impactful initiatives to pursue, this rapid sales assessment may help. It only takes five minutes, then you'll receive a customized report and action steps to consider.