How to get the best ROI from your sales team

Who Are You?

This white paper is written for sales team managers. Typically you would be responsible for

the sales budget, hiring, deployment and management of sales resource, preparing sales reports

and ensuring that every effort is made to deliver maximum ROI from your sales budget.

We have prepared this white Paper to offer you some practical tips on obtaining maximum ROI from your sales

team.

Our goal is simple: To supply your Sales team with their greatest asset.

Offering an elite team of Salesman’s PA’s who will take away all the tasks that

prevent them from smashing their targets month on month, year on year.

Consequently, your team will deliver maximum productivity and results in

the form of boosted sales wins, making them super-efficient, super

motivated sellers

How will this boost your business?

Throughout this White Paper you will notice that the emphasis is always on

keeping the salesman in front of your customers, pitching closing and winning

business. We focus strongly on “tuning out the noise” and any distractions that

can easily clutter up their job specs if allowed to. Thus transforming your sales

team into an elite team of focused sellers.

It is a fact that decent sales resource does not come cheap. As the “first

voice of the company” Sales people also need to be well trained and

versed in your company, and product before they can truly evangelise

your message, all of this takes time and significant investment. We

therefore strongly encourage you to stop thinking of your sales team as

an “army of soldiers on the battlefield” and start thinking of them as an

elite team of navy seals to be strategically deployed when necessary. In fact, by harnessing some of the

methods we suggest here it may even be possible to have a smaller but more efficient sales team.

Stop making sellers do admin and tasks that sap morale.

Sales people in general tend to have the same bug bears about their

jobs.

No surprises here but if you take a senior level salesman and make him

do cold calls all day long and nothing else pretty soon he will leave. It

makes good sense to analyse their role and try to minimise or spread

out the unpleasant parts. There are many excellent lead generation

options available that will reduce cold calling for example.

Diary Management & Travel

Travel can also be challenging. Many sales people for example hate having to

wait 3 hours in an airport for a meeting in another airport that takes just half an

hour. A dedicated diary management resource could be one option. Also being

sympathetic to their needs when asking them to travel and trying to minimise

travel times etc. Offering access to video conference equipment is also a great

option.

Put the sales cycle on speed

Many businesses have long slow complex sales cycles that can die a death half way

through. What is the best way to keep your seller motivated during this long sales

cycle?

Set the expectations. Sellers do not often see much further than the commission

cheque and if they expect it sooner than it comes, disappoint sets in. Avoid this by

setting the expectations accordingly.

Do everything you can to speed up the sales cycle, for example, cut down on the

lead gen phase by fast forwarding some leads through the door.

If the value of each sale is very high try to insert project milestone incentives

along the way at agreed success points, this gives them something tangible to work towards. Like this:

Example of Sales Timeline

Preparation is key Give them all the tools they need for selling

When leads come in do your sellers have everything they need to respond

to them? It is the role of the marketing function to ensure that the sellers

are equipped with tailored proposals that are up to date and fully support

the sellers. Do they have up to date business cards? If your company uses

printed materials like brochures, do they have a ready supply? Time kills all

deals, so if the sellers have to wait for information to be prepared they run

the risk of the hard won lead going cold.

Contacts Fuel the Fire

So you hired a super sales guy with tonnes of contacts, so he should be able

to generate his own leads and contacts? Right?? Wrong!!

What normally happens is that you seller will join the company and merrily

skip through their own network and approach everyone with your

opportunity. After a while these contacts will run out and they will need a

fresh stack of contacts.

It is important that you do not look upon this negatively, and have a strategy in place ready to deliver

these leads when the time comes.

This is the time when you need to fuel the fire and keep more fresh contacts coming into your seller.

This ensures that the sales cycle does not slow down or fall flat. Your Salesman’s PA can conduct data

mining and market segmentation to ensure that there is always a steady stream of contacts for them to

attack.

Strategic deployment ~ minimise admin

It does not make sense to interview, hire, train and pay sellers a premium

wage and then constantly make them do simple admin work which is

equivalent to the minimum wage.

If you pay a sales person £100k per annum, (and the same again in

commissions) then keep him focused on doing what you pay him for. Give

him as much marketing and admin support he needs to do his job well.

Strip out his job spec as much as possible to keep him focused on selling.

It is a well-known fact that most sellers salivate at the mouth when given the opportunity to close

warm leads. In fact they positively live for it. So motivate them by keeping them focused on that and

not making them do any admin. The golden rule ~ Keep sellers in front of the customer.

Recruit the right people

This is an obvious one but many people miss it. Start thinking of your sellers as a supremely trained,

elite fighting force. When recruiting sellers many people request “some-one young and hungry” only to

find that the spotty kid does not have the senior contacts, lacks impact and credibility in front of

clients and just does not cut it.

It sounds cliché but for the most part successful selling really is all in the rolodex. What are their

contacts like? At what level are their contacts? Are they just name dropping or do they really know

these people enough to leverage a sales relationship?

How to interview a slippery seller

Now is also the time to scrutinise those resumes. Have your HR guy or a trusted

recruiter do it. Under close scrutiny a career expert will always find the blemishes

on the “flawless” CV.

Performing the exercise above will allow you to walk into the interview

room poised and 100% ready to ask the difficult questions. Every

experienced seller will have their “skeletons in the closet” and “can open,

worms everywhere subjects” so make sure you ask those up front and

get them out of the way.

Interview like a HR Pro

The usual sticky subjects are reasons for leaving, why

they didn’t hit their sales target etc. Your objective is

always to get under their skin, catch them off guard

and let the dirty secrets pop out. Try to leave long

gaps in the dialogue, speak less, and listen more. Try

smiling and nodding a lot so they feel more at ease.

Encourage them to relax and be friendly. Ask open

questions. Let them ramble on when there is silence.

All these tricks usually let Pandora out of the box with

relative ease.

Reading a sellers CV – It’s all about the numbers

Good sellers should always measure themselves in numbers.

Those headline figures of achievement should be there like a common thread weaving the whole CV

together and hitting you in the face with their success.

If the numbers don’t add up, why not? Or if one is missing, why is it

missing? Obviously you are looking for a solid record of success here

that progresses and builds year on year. But the perfect sales CV is a

common fallacy, every seller will miss their numbers during their

career for one reason or another. The usual reasons are, the economy,

unrealistic sales target, mid-year changes to the sales plan etc. The

point is there should be a reason.

Analyse their personality

Most sellers have certain personality traits. They are almost universal

and the true common denominator amongst sellers. When conducting

the hiring process it is easy to uncover people who are literally

“natural born sellers” and those who are sheep in wolves clothing.

The easiest way to do this is to perform personality testing. It is

usually a short 40 question form to fill out answering control

questions that will give you a clear indication of their personality

type. This type of analysis will clearly tell you if they can handle the

rigours of the job. For example, how do they deal with rejection? Do they take offense easily? Are they

tenacious and bounce back easily.

Harness Social Media ~ Personal Rapport building

But you already pay a bunch of money to the marketing guys to promote your

company’s social media, so why invest more in your sales peoples too?

Build personal rapport ~ Simply put, sellers need to be approachable, they need to be

found. Not just within your company, but personally.

“People buy from people. Normally people they

know and like”…………………..

Why is this?

By putting themselves out there into the realm of social media they can make

themselves more personable. They can also start more conversations about

business with greater ease. Also when leads do come in they tend to be

warmer, this is because the person making the enquiry has already taken the

time to look this person up on line and find out a bit about them. So when they

do eventually take the plunge and decide to call them up, they already have some common ground to

leverage.

As a good starting point it would be good to do a review of all your sales people and

ensure that they are “wired for sound” in social media terms, that would include:

Facebook, (business profile, not personal, with all privacy settings open for contact)

Twitter, set it up to take minimum effort to update it. There are lots of apps

to make it super easy. Set Twitter up to copy over to your sales persons

profile page on your website too. Set Twitter up to update Facebook

automatically and Linked in.

Linked in, an up to date key worded profile is priceless. Also encourage them to use as

many apps as they can to promote the company.

They can add presentations, they can add documents, proposals, white papers, up to 3

company website links etc to their company business profile. Ensure that they are maximising this

“prime real estate”

There are also a number of excellent software programmes that will auto add targeted

Twitter followers. This is basically building a small highly targeted channel that is free to

advertise, network and promote your product. The cost involved in doing this exercise

are small, but the benefits are big. Twitter is a really good way to push up business

enquiries and start meaningful business conversations.

Your Salesman’s PA is trained in all aspects of social media, set up, keywords, optimisation, maintenance,

she is your best asset in creating personal rapport for your sellers.

Personal Profile

Your sellers are your company’s prime real estate. They are literally the voice of

your company and the first point of contact for valuable sales enquiries.

Therefore it is important that they are presented in the most approachable way.

I recommend that every seller has their own dedicated profile page on your

company website. Showcasing them in this manner will help in many ways. It

could become their own personal landing page for a senior level B2B

introductions campaign. It could be the link at the bottom of their auto sig. It

adds credibility to be anchored as a solid business reference within your company. It also turns cold

leads into warm leads, because people already feel like they know you before they pick up the phone.

This business profile should also include their current status (from twitter feed) and their personal

contact details, plus any blogs etc if they have that.

Personal Introductions Campaign on Auto Pilot

This is not marketing, and it is not simply an automated e-mail

campaign. This is about leveraging the world’s most powerful business

network to make senior level B2B introductions from one person to

another.

Now let’s not mince words here, but any sales person can use the

Linked in network to do the above, but how many sales people have

time or remember to do it in a structured disciplined way?

We propose a laser targeted introductions campaign that is fully managed by your Salesman’s PA on

auto pilot. Even inbound enquiries can be qualified to save the sales person time.

Appointment Setting

What could motivate a sales person more than a diary full of

sales appointments? Appointment setting has the added

advantage of being guaranteed lead generation for a set cost. So

you know exactly what you will spend and what you will receive.

Appointment setting is a targeted lead generation campaign

based on the phone. It starts with a contact list and from then on

is called and B2B appointments are set. The diary is managed

and appointments are added to the CRM. Your Salesman’s PA

can also call up warm sales enquiries for you, she can seamlessly convert these into sales meetings for

you.

Call answering

No-one is 100% available all the time, but a business enquiry that goes call answering to voicemail

has a much reduced conversion rate. Therefore access to a personal or messaging service is highly

recommended. These services are relatively cheap and boost the likelihood of the hard won prospect

enquiry leaving a usable message.

The Salesman’s PA is a new concept, offering

the call answering and B2B appointments

setting service all rolled into one. She is also

available to undertake admin tasks as

necessary. The main benefits are that your

salesperson only focuses on selling and remains

super focused.

The added sales benefit of having a human answer calls goes way beyond warmth creation and

friendly rapport. The Salesman’s PA is trained to get all relevant contact information out of the caller

and turn them into a valuable sales lead. She does everything possible to turn them into a sales lead.

“Your Salesman’s PA fights to boost your conversion rates

in every conceivable way. She is the Salesman’s best

advocate and secret weapon to smashing their target.”

Translate Marketing

Sellers are usually very direct people. Don’t overload them with information they don’t

need. For example the rift between marketing and sales can be overcome by taking all

the marketing info and translating it into sales terms. Sellers are usually only interested

in leads and lead gen and how the marketing campaign results in leads and of what

quality those leads will be and the likelihood that they will convert etc. So cut out all the

marketing fluff and say it directly.

Reliable CRMs make reporting easy

Regular review of your CRM program is essential. If it is over complicated, eats

time, is unreliable etc it is time for a change. How much does that cost to your

business in real terms, not to mention the fact that it lowers morale. The ideal

CRM is not overly complex and is ideally adapted for each department’s

differing needs. Also does your CRM adapt to include social media? Does it have any facility for so

called lead nurturing?

How about your CRM reporting?

Is all the information already inputted onto the system? Is it simply

an admin task to pull it all off the system in the form of a targeted

report? Well if it is an admin task, have a trained admin expert

manage it.

Personalised Incentives

Planning of a comprehensive incentive package that actually

motivates sellers is challenging. But it may help to think outside

the box. First of all ask them what motivates them, every person

will be different. Also try not to think in linear terms. An

incentive does not have to be a tangible thing. For example how

about an incentive that serves 2 purposes – why not offer them

the opportunity to have more help smashing their targets and

maximise all their commissions? Why not offer them various new measures that will help support

them more, make them more efficient and allow them to cut down on doing the unpleasant parts of the

job like cold calling etc?

Lead qualification

Tuning out the noise.~ Show me the money!! Any type of social media

activity, B2B introductions campaign or online activity will generate spam. It

is unavoidable. The most challenging thing therefore for the busy seller is

how to tune out all the noise and just listen out to the leads. Here is the

answer. It is impossible. If there was a software programme or action script

that could automatically filter through the various social media inboxes and

cream off the leads I would probably be redundant by now. However at this

time such does not exist, therefore it is 100% a manual job. Now here lies the challenge, we have said

above that social media is good for sellers, and helps convert cold leads into warm ones. But we have

also said that they should avoid doing lowly admin tasks that waste their very costly time. So how to

achieve a balance?

The easiest way is to have an admin person regularly enter the accounts, clear out spam and send

through leads. This is a fully managed service which ensures that all inboxes are taken care of and the

seller only receives relevant contacts. These should always be presented in a spreadsheet or CRM

format, or more ideally input directly onto the spreadsheet and sent on a calling list.

Harness buzz marketing

Buzz marketing is what won IBM the war when they first launched. Even

though they were smaller and had less money than their competitors.

Basically all their employees were well treated, well supported and firmly

encouraged to speak highly of the company to all their friends, family and

business contacts. This inward recommendation is phenomenally powerful as

it is one of the most sincere recommendations you can get. Why not

encourage all employees but especially sales people to do this?

Feel good factor

Sales is a job with ups and downs, the highs can be intoxicating and the lows can

be brutal. Every now and again there is always need for an injection of positivity.

Why not organize the motivational seminar that serves no other purpose than to

give your sellers a boost of positivity? A relatively easy day that is well prepared

and makes them think outside the box about things and gives them a well

deserved boost of sunshine. A simple Linked in search reveals literally hundreds

of motivational speakers with great recommendations as well as life coaches etc.

Many struggle to find work from time to time and offer good discounts, so why

not hire one for a small fee. It is a low cost way to boost morale and inject some

buzz into your sales team.

Analyse and strip out their job description

In depth analysis of a job description and day to day processes is priceless

in order to eliminate weaknesses. How is this done?

Start with a piece of blank paper and draw out a rough flow chart of

processes from enquiry to fulfilment. This should encompass all

conceivable responsibilities.

When this exercise is finished you can draw them up neatly on a

PowerPoint flow chart to focus your mind. As you perform this task you

will analyse the various duties. The objective here is to strip out tasks that eats time,

find easier solutions and work around any bottle necks.

Any tasks in the salesman’s job spec that could be perceived to be a simple admin task

should be outsourced to some-one who is highly trained. The goal with our sellers is to

keep them streamlined, super efficient and always available to meet with customers

and win business.

Services we offer

Salesman’s PA offers a range of services that are specifically designed with Sales people in mind.

Call Answering

Lead Generation Campaign *

Personal Marketing Activities

Daily Status Updates

Social Media Management

Growth of Business Networks

Online Presence, personal branding & Rapport Building

Expense Report Submission

Sales Appointment Setting

Sales Lead Qualification

Acknowledge Sales Leads

Target Market Segmentation Analysis

Sales Cycle Admin

CRM Maintenance

Sales Report Production

Call our friendly team to see how we can help you smash

your target today!

0208 123 0453

admin@salesmanspa.com