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Sales Management Training: Protect Your Company From (sales) Identity Theft in 3 Simple Steps?

Business Development Officer? Business Procurement Specialist? Did you know these types of titles for salespeople can ultimately rob your organization?

As a Sales Management Training Consultant, I often notice business cards from salespeople with titles that require some effort to decipher. As I inquire further about their role, eventually it pops out – “I’m in sales”. It makes me wonder, when did “Sales” become a five letter word that can no longer show up on one’s business card? It gets deeper…

Building high performance sales organizations is my specialty. Much of my success is a result of a startling discovery made years ago – there is no proven correlation between Personality and Sales Productivity. This discovery enabled me to lead a team that transformed a B business unit into a B business unit in 18 months for a Fortune Global 500 company. How? We recognized anyone can succeed in sales despite personality. Sales is simple if you learn how to master sales behavior intelligence and develop your salespeople accordingly. Sales is about behavior and our proven sales system is built on the 25 behaviors that is proven to impact sales productivity – Sales Identity is one of the behaviors we measure.

What is Sales Identity?

Sales Identity measures a salesperson’s pride of the sales profession. If a person views selling as noble, they are considered to have a strong Sales Identity. The opposite is true for those who view a sales position as something to be ashamed of, they are considered to have a weak Sales Identity.

Selling is noble, we all sell everyday whether we realize it or not. However, selling is often perceived negatively because of bad experiences. To some degree, society tends to cast a negative light on people in the sales profession. Due to the strength of society’s misguided views, some sales professionals feel shame and are compelled to hide their sales position and adopt deflected titles such as, “Business Development Officers” or “Procurement Specialists”. Such behavior is proven to be costly, read on…

Some people refuse to accept the notion of selling altogether, even though they are in fact trying to close a deal. A classic example…

Recently I was on a flight to a sales conference in Atlanta and I struck up a conversation with the gentleman next to me. Our idle chit chat led into a careers conversation. He shared with me how he worked for a major home improvement company in charge of the distribution centers in 4 states in the South and Southwest. After explaining my role as a Sales Management Training Consultant and how I help sales teams and salespeople. He immediately responded with “I could never be a salesperson!” We continued our conversation and he explained to me that he was preparing for a major presentation with the Executive Team of the company because he felt he needed an additional Million allocated to his budget for the following year. He went on to demonstrate to me how the organization “would ultimately benefit from the additional spend with a better Return on Investment (ROI)…”

As he was explaining this to me, I began to smile and chuckle. Initially, he probably thought I was being rude. Then I asked him “So, you are trying to convince the Executive Team to give you an additional million for your budget, correct?” “Yes.” He replied. I then added “And you can support the benefits of doing so, correct?” “Yes” he replied again. “Are you sure you’re not a salesperson?” He sat back in his chair and smiled, I could see the light bulb turn on. My point dawned on him. I eventually gave him some coaching on how to think more like a salesperson and improve his sales presentation.

Why Measure Sales Identity?

Measuring Sales Identity can ultimately save your organization a substantial amount of money long term. How?

Organizations all over the globe are challenged to hire high performance salespeople, not doing so can be costly in terms of sales results, hiring and training costs. Recent studies show, the average cost of hiring a poor performing salesperson has swelled to over 0,000/year. Think about it, how much are hiring mistakes costing you?

Research shows – salespeople with weak Sales Identity will under perform within 6 months of joining an organization and ultimately “self select” out of the sales profession within 18 – 24 months. In fact, we found people with weak Sales Identity prefer to apply for “sales” positions with deflected titles because they insinuate less sales accountability.

Unless detected, salespeople with weak Sales Identity will struggle and steal valuable resources from your organization via increased turnover, higher training costs and poor sales results. Here are 3 simple steps to protect your organization going forward:

Step 1: Remove the Identity Crisis

A surefire way to jeopardize long term sales productivity is to have your organization struggle through a sales identity crisis. If the role is a sales role – title it as such. Top performing salespeople absolutely love sales and prefer to be called – Sales Representatives. Having deflected titles attracts weaker performers who will struggle to get out of the ranks of mediocrity long term.

Step 2: Monitor Your “Motivational” Costs with Sales Reps

If you find your sales organization spending more time on motivating sales reps within the 6 – 24 month window of being hired, you may have a Sales Identity issue. Depending upon the severity, there may be hope.

Step 3: Know What You’re Hiring, Prior to Making the Offer

Hiring mistakes pertaining to sales positions can be costly! Use an assessment tool that measures the Sales Identity of your candidates prior to hire.

Personal Accountability in Sales Management Training

For over 200 years the US Constitution has served as the system of fundamental laws and principles of our society. This amazing document has served as the cornerstone of our democracy. A reflection of our Founding Fathers’ core values, the Constitution has kept our society on track since 1787, and has certainly contributed significantly to the growth and success of the United States.

What is the Constitution of your sales team?

Have you, as yet, identified and communicated your cornerstone? If I was to ask five of your salespeople to describe to me what is expected of them in areas other than sales results would I receive five different answers?

The Production Equation: B+A=R.

Behavior plus activities equals sales results. Or, another way of saying this is that every successful sale is the outcome of a series of behaviors (how something is done) as well as activities (how many times a behavior is performed).

Unfortunately, many of us sales managers try to manage results. We wait until a rep has a bad month before we decide to get involved in “coaching” them. So then, when a rep produces a bad month, we rush over and smother them in coaching trying and get their production back up quickly. Sales managers who try to manage results are like a driver of an automobile who only looks in the rear view mirror… chances are they will be surprised when they collide with something that is unexpected. Looking only in the rear view mirror is not an effective way to drive a car, but it happens to be the way that many sales managers drive their sales teams.

Sales results can’t be managed, but behaviors and activities can.

To be the best sales manager you must get in front of the result, get the best sales management training possible, and put in writing your expectations of the behaviors and activities that contribute to sales results. 

Think of this issue – a team without well-communicated performance standards – from your salesperson’s perspective. As a salesperson, you have a clear understanding of the sales quota results expected of you, but you’re unsure exactly how to produce those results. So you do what you think you should. You “make it up on the fly.” Then, because nobody tells you you’re doing it wrong you assume it is acceptable behavior. So you keep doing it, and form bad habits. It’s an unproductive cycle.

How to Draft your Sales Team’s Constitution

Think of your top salesperson… what specific behaviors does he/she do that contributes to sales success? For example, “makes at least five new business prospecting calls every day.” Then, what attitudinal qualities does he/she have which contributes to success? For example, “attempts to solve problems before seeking help.”

Make a list of behaviors and activities that describe your top salesperson, and then share this list with everyone on your sales team. Have each of your salespeople assess themselves on a quarterly basis against these behaviors and activities: Meets, Exceeds, Needs Improvement. Then, sit down one-on-one with each salesperson, discuss his/her self assessment, and put a plan in place to improve those.

Four Components of a Sales Constitution are as follows: Written Well communicated Understood by everybody Equally applied

Sales Management Training; is it Really Necessary?

Sales Management training is not as common as it used to be, as more and more organizations think the sales management should already know it all. However, lack of training is the root to most companies’ bottomline problems.

Sales management training is just as important, if not more than, salespeople training.

Top executive management are the leaders of the sales force and need to be constantly demonstrating the appropriate behaviours for their salespeople to follow. It is really a monkey see, monkey do situation.

Are your sales leaders demonstrating appropriate behaviours?

Do they have goals and a plan of action to accomplish those goals? Are they disciplined, motivated, energetic and enthusiastic. Are they the type of mentor that you would like to have? Are they going on prospecting calls with their sales executives, or even handling accounts on their own?

Are they debriefing after a prospecting visit and providing feedback / coaching? Are they investing in their team or are they investing their time in moving upwards in the organization?

Without proper training, sales management is not half as effective as they can be. However, like most training, for the training to be effective it also needs to be customized to organizational objectives, it needs and should be conducted on an ongoing basis with one on one coaching.

Sales Management training should include following a sales results system, and demonstrating that system with their salespeople on an ongoing basis. For example, if sales executive management is always telling their salespeople what to do, who owns the idea and who is committed to making it happen? Also, what are the salesperson going to do with the customer – tell them as well?

What if sales management training provided a system whereby sales reps would be engaged, come up with ideas, take ownership and make it happen. Then who is committed? Is that not the way you would want your salespeople to be with your prospects and customers – engaging and buying from you versus telling and selling where there is no ongoing relationship.

Most organizations provide sales training, which is great, particularly if it is ongoing, but they forget salespeople management in the process. It will help management to hire top producers, and then allow them to motivate, mentor, coach, delegate, obtain ownership and commitment, build high performing teams, run effective meetings and provide for ongoing training, creating more winners.

Sales management training is the foundation to ongoing sales results from selection, to coaching, training, rewarding and promoting. It is absolutely necessary!