Sales Blog with Professional Sales Tips

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I’ve observed something important over time about sales managers. I’ve seen that a sales manager is in a unique position to help us if we have a good relationship with them. The ways they can help us are frequently not readily apparent. Their position allows them to improve our sales skills and assist us in how to sell for our company.

“The ways they can help us are frequently not readily apparent.”

It doesn’t matter whether we think our sales manager is the best thing since cell phones or if we dislike them more than filling out call reports. They can provide real sales help if we’ve built a relationship with them. Here are some of the benefits this relationship provides:

• Territories are always being changed and/or being reassigned (once a year in many companies). The sales manager is the person who decides who gets assigned to specific territories. We all know that all territories are not created equal.

• Sales rep’s leave companies and frequently they’ll have some cherry accounts that need to be reassigned. Who do you think makes those assignments?

• They have the combination to the safe that holds the best sales leads. Do you think they give them out fairly? Of course not. They give them out to sales rep’s they like and think will best handle them.

• Who do you think is the primary influencer of budgets or quotas? There is nothing more loosey-goosey then setting sales budgets. They are very subjective. A good relationship with your sales manager will only help you here.

Sales managers are in a position to help us in many behind-the-scenes ways. The password to this sales help is relationship.

Related links: Sales Manager and Sales Representative, Working Together, Do you think your sales manager is competent?

To receive this sales blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

There have been many studies researching the main reason that some sales reps are extremely successful and some are less so. Virtually all of the research comes to the same conclusion and it is surprising in its simplicity.

Sales managers want to know this predictor because it can help them hire the right people and provide focused sales tips in order to teach them how to sell. Sales reps want to know in order to improve their sales skills in an area that will have the biggest impact. This quest for the magic pill is one of the reasons that there’s a new sales blog around every corner.

“This predictor of success is not one that you have any control over…but in a way you do.”

What is it? Time in territory. That’s right, the longer a sales rep is in his or her territory the more likely he or she is to be successful. In the math world they call this a positive correlation. As the length of time increases, so does sales volume.

I think the implications for this are significant:

• If you’re a sales rep and thinking about changing jobs, remember that you’ll have to start the clock over again. Be careful about throwing away the time in territory that you’ve already earned with your current employer.
• Sales managers, do you have a long term sales rep that is not performing like you think they could? Then get out there and encourage and nurture them. You don’t want to lose his or her time in territory.
• Changing jobs frequently can hurt a sales rep’s career and a high sales rep turnover in a company can hurt an employer.

The bottom line sales tip is that hanging in there with our sales job or, if you’re a sales manager, hanging in there with a struggling long term sales rep might be the best thing you can do for your sales volume.

To receive this sales blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

What follows is some sales advice about asking for special discounts from your sales manager for that prospect with lots of potential.

The not so effective request:

Salesperson to Sales Manager: “I have this great prospect who is going to yield us tons of future business if we can just get the first order. To be competitive they said we’ll have to discount our normal price by 38%.”
Sales Manager to Salesperson: “That’s below our cost! What do you know about them?”
Salesperson to Sales Manager: “All I know is that they need the stuff really badly and they promised us lots of future business. Oh, about our costs, they want 10,000 so we’ll cover the loss with volume. I know how to sell this prospect.”
Sales Manager to Salesperson: ???

The productive request:

Salesperson to Sales Manager: “The XYZ Company says they will buy from us if we can come off our price by 38%. Here is what I know about the decision makers, budget, competition and account potential [realistic and well prepared information provided here]. This is how I plan to demonstrate our added value in order to increase our odds of getting future higher margin business [more good information]. A realistic price quote would be 20% off our normal price. I need your approval for that discount.
Sales Manager to Salesperson: “Approved!”

When you go to your sales manager with reasonable and researched requests you’re much more likely to get a thumbs up. It will also allow you to show off your sales skills and a make for a happier sales manager. Your fellow sales pro’s are frequently going to your sales manager with a continuing chorus of “I need a big discount to get into this prospect that has tremendous future potential.” When asking for a big discount on a prospect, the sales manager needs to feel reasonably confident that the prospect will actually buy in the future and at higher margins. The key is information.

To receive this blog by email <click here> to receive by RSS <click here>. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Fact: As sales professionals, we are ultimately in control of our sales career. This isn’t a good thing, this is a great thing! But it also requires us to take on certain responsibilities if we want to maximize this control.

The following are five truths about our sales career:

1. We are our own best sales career counselor. No one cares as much about our career as we do, not our
employer, our manager or anyone else.
2. We are responsible for our own development and training. This may mean getting our employer to train us or for us to seek training on our own.
3. We must think beyond our current sales job; we are in a career, not a job. As I’ve written in another post, Sales Staff Turnover, few sales jobs are permanent.
4. We are ultimately our own best motivators; no one else can motivate us over the long haul.
5. The most successful sales professionals are those that stick with it. I’ve never met a number one salesperson that got to that position in 3 months - it took years and usually spanned over several employers.

Do we have 100% control of our sales career at all times? Hardly. The “Divine Director of Sales” in His heavenly office can grab the wheel from time to time, but our individual actions, and inactions, will have a huge impact on our sales career.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

We all know the Pareto Principle, which broadly states that 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes. Countless sales organizations have gotten themselves into deep trouble by mindlessly applying this principle to their sales organizations. I call it the Pareto Protocol.

Sales management thinks something like the following, “We’ve done an analysis and find that 80% of our sales comes from only 20% of our sales force. We need to fire 80% of our salesforce, which will lower our overhead and increase our profits!”

They think that if they can increase the sales of the 20%-super-producers by just 25% they won’t see any decline in revenues, while simultaneously realizing an 80% reduction in their base sales payroll. It sounds too good to be true, because it is.

I’ve seen the results when the Pareto Protocol is applied to sales organizations and it is consistently a disaster. I am fully aware that every sales organization has salespersons that need to find another career, or at the least be encouraged to work for a competitor.

I am also fully aware that every sales organization has its high producing heavy lifters, but to think that they can and will do even more lifting, all the time, is an ill-advised sales strategy.

Before your sales organization is tempted to partially or fully implement the Pareto Protocol, please consider the following:

1. Your top producers are in that position because they are already working at high capacity. Do they really have an additional 25%+ of bandwidth to give you?
2. You have salespeople at differing levels of development. Firing 80% of the sales force will undoubtedly nip many future super stars in the bud.
3. After applying the Pareto Protocol your sales force is now theoretically comprised exclusively of superstars; you’ve unintentionally created headhunter heaven. Be prepared for your superstars to be rapidly and easily gobbled up by your competitors.
4. Sometimes sales management tends to put their heads in the sand and pretend that everyone on the sales force has exactly the same opportunities. Not true. Accounts, products, geography, experience, sales management, etc. are variables that have to be accounted for and leveraged for each salesperson.

There is a normal distribution of sales capabilities within all sales organizations. Please see Sales Managers, Invest in Your Average Performers.

Sales management needs to focus on improving/removing the bottom 15%, improving the middle 70% and rewarding the top 15%. Sales management also has to look at its own skill levels at managing the sales force most effectively, but that’s for another post.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer