You Can Always Sell More - How To Improve Any Sales Force

Article #1 of our 9 Article Series

Why Is It So Hard To Improve A Sales Force? And Why Do We Tend To Lose It Once We Change It?

Most sales leaders are not satisfied with their sales team’s current efforts, yet are not sure what to do to actually generate any long term change and improvement. There are five questions to assess where you and your leadership team are with respect to training and improving your sales team:nn - Question #1 - Do you actually believe that “experienced = trained” with sales people?
- Question #2 - How much sales training have you conducted for your sales team in the last year?
- Question #3 - How much sales leadership training have you received in your sales management career?
- Question #4 - How much time and effort do you devote to coaching and leading members of your sales team?
- Question #5 - What is your current plan to increase the skills and performance of various members of your sales team?

Most sales managers would love to have a plan to improve the skills and performance of their sales team…but in reality don’t. What is your plan for the next year to improve your sales team and their selling successes?

Five Tests To Help Identify Where Your Sales Team Is Right Now

There are also five simple tests you can give your sales team to provide you with an overall assessment of your team’s current skills and awareness:

Sales Test #1 - Write down the steps of a sales call as you know them

Sales Test #2 - Describe your “ID to Close” new business selling process

Sales Test #3 - Describe your full year plan to maintain and grow your best accounts

Sales Test #4 - Describe how you would answer a prospect or customer asking you “Why, based on all the competitive alte
atives available to me as a buyer would I want to buy from you?”

Sales Test #5 - Describe how your toughest competitor is answering a prospect or customer when they ask them this same “Why buy from you?” question.

So how did your sales team do to these five test questions? Almost all experienced and otherwise successful sales people taking this five question test fail all five questions.

So What About Your Sales Leadership?

Once you have successfully evaluated your sales team then the next step is to analyze if your senior management is actually creating and supporting a positive sales culture.

When a sales team is provided with effective sales leadership, administrative and technical support, even an otherwise average performer can perform at a much higher and more profitable level.

But most companies do not believe sales training is a valid or needed investment for an experienced team. Over 90% of all sales training is done solely on product and industry knowledge. Little is done to actually train and improve the selling skills of a sales force. How much have you spent on sales skill training for your experienced sales team lately?

Want to join us as we work through steps and exercises to help your team sell more and improve their selling success?

Our goal with this series is to provide you with a proven, yet easy to implement training and coaching plan to help you evaluate, design, implement, track and lead your team through a comprehensive sales coaching and training process.

The best thing you can do to get started on this exciting journey is to give the tests outlined above to help you understand where the skills and structures currently are for your team.

Want even more information? Read my book “You Can Always Sell More - How To Improve Any Sales Force.” This 300+ page hard cover book outlines the entire process we will be describing in these articles and can be ordered by calling 800-526-0074 or through www.GreatSalesSkills.com.nnIn our second article in this series we will discuss the six commitments needed from your management team before you can effectively change, improve and realign your sales organization.

I congratulate you for your interest in working through these articles to strengthen the skills and competitive advantage of your sales team. May you enjoy the process.

Reprint with permission “You Can Always Sell More – How To Improve Any Sales Force” ISBN #0-471-73915-4 John Wiley & Sons.

Copyright 2008 Jim Pancero, Inc.