Peak Performance ? What You See Is What You Get!
Would you like an easy way to track the performance of your sales SuperStars? Will a large sales activity board really make a difference? You bet! This article will give you three easy ways to improve the performance of your sales team because what you see is what you get!
Setting up your sales activity board: Start by ordering a large erasable board from your local office supply store, the bigger the better (hint, a big board = assumed big results!) and mount this board on a wall easily seen by your sales team but not visible to your current or prospective clients. Use this sales activity board to track the performance of your company, highlighting the "critical" factors for your sales success. Initially, track the cold calling activity of your sales team, their client retention percentages, the number of daily presentations they make, and their closing ratios of presentations versus the number of sales being made. Your sales activity board is also a perfect place to forecast the monthly team goals for your sales team and will give each team member a way to see how their month is progressing. At the end of each month, schedule a regroup meeting to summarize the performance from the most recent month. Then, erase your sales activity board and set new individual/team goals for the upcoming month.
Tip From The Coach: After you have installed your erasable sales activity board, assign a unique marker color to each sales person. This "pride of ownership" means each person on your sales team will have great enthusiasm in making sure they can see as much of their marker color on the sales activity board, as the rest of your sales team. Sounds crazy, but it works!
Ranking top performers: Using your sales activity boards, recap the performance each month for each of the sales teams you manage and develop a ranking report. Use this report to track the SuperStars in your company and circulate this information company-wide. This ranking report should reward top monthly performance both individually and as a team, depending on the areas you are measuring. This ranking report should also summarize your SuperStar performers for the month, by the quarter and year-to-date. By reflecting these three time periods, everyone is given a chance to shine and every individual within your company can see how their performance compares to the SuperStars within your company.
Tip From The Coach: Based on the results from your sales ranking reports you can now create sales incentive programs and build new compensation plans with much greater accuracy. In addition, your sales ranking reports will also become a powerful tool for calculating quarterly projections and developing each year's budget. Lastly, try and keep your "critical" factors for sales success on a one-page report, if possible.
Tracking your key prospects: Now, set-up a place on your sales activity board to track the progress of your key prospects. For instance, if five new sales could come from one large company, put their name on your sales activity board and leave a space to track the amount of sales activity being made with this company. Once you and your sales team have identified your ten largest prospects, develop a 90 day written plan to sell each large account.
Tip From The Coach: Be certain your sales team works their key prospects consistently while continuing to be "professionally persistent". Ask your sales team to work like "heart surgeons". A heart surgeon can apply a little pressure in a small area and get giant results. The same thing will happen for your sales team when they see the results of focusing on their key prospects.
Want to hear more about this important topic or ask some additional questions? Fax a note on your letterhead to 435-615-8670 or send an E-mail to
[email protected] and The Coach will fax/E-mail back to you a free invitation to be a participant on a TeleForum conference call. On this call we will discuss the type of information to put on your sales activity boards and how to develop a performance ranking report for the sales teams you manage, using one form.
Author's note: Ernest F. Oriente, The Coach, is the founder of PowerHour® a professional business coaching/recruiting service and the author of SmartMatch Alliances?. He has spent 17,500 hours [since 1995] delivering customized training, by telephone, in leadership, traditional/Internet marketing and sales for fast growing sales companies and entrepreneurial businesses worldwide. PowerHour® specializes in global distance learning by telephone, using their state-of-the-art conference call system for interactive and dynamic TeleForums. Twice-monthly TeleForums link 10-100 executives/professionals/individuals who are geographically dispersed, in a time efficient and profitable format.
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