All I want for Christmas is better sales performance

Another year comes and another year goes and its a time for reflection, especially professionally. What have I achieved this year? What could I have done better? What are my ambitions for 2019?

This should apply to both sales leaders and salespeople. But sales leaders should be thinking about this from a wider perspective, after all they're responsible for getting a group of individuals to perform and exceed.

Note that I say a group of individuals to achieve rather than them personally achieving their team quota. Why do I say that? A quota is a quota, right? No matter how get there.

The 80/20 rule is pretty relevant when it comes to many sales leader’s performance. Around 20% are responsible for 80% of the team’s revenues, and don't assume that's because the 20% are the best salespeople. Better territories, longer tenure to build a pipeline, preferential treatment, better support, one off big deals, bluebird contracts that they did little to deserve. But that's selling, some are just in the right place at the right time, or the cards just benefited them more.

Great sales leadership should be measured against how many salespeople in their team the sales leader coaches to achieve and exceed quotas. In my opinion a high percentage of this measurement is the best indication of a great sales leader.

So as 2019 beckons what can you do to have a greater positive impact on your team?

1. You could look at investment in the latest sales training
2. You could create or update a sales playbook that reflects your market and prospects processes
3. You could invest in new sales tools designed to help with prospecting, time efficiency and opportunity management

You could do lots of things, these are just a few options available to you. Some of you will and some won't and 2019 will be the same as 2018.

If you smashed your 2018 quotas across your wider team (not just through a small percentage of them) then well done, you're a rare success in today's tough market. 

But most of you won't have done this because the latest research from various sources shows that over 50% of salespeople will fail to achieve quota again this year, and the percentage is increasing year on year. Sales performance is in decline.

So, if you decide to continue with business as usual then why will anything change for you? One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things and expecting different results!

Here's my view on a few simple recommendations that could have a really positive impact for you in 2019.

Be decisive

Be more decisive as a leader, I'm amazed at how often sales leaders want agreement or acceptance from their sales team before implementing change. It's not a bloody democracy guys, that's why you're the leader, it's your job to decide what's best, explain why it's good for them and good for the business then implement and execute.

Sure, we're in a world of consensus-based decision making but salespeople can't help but to consider things from a purely selfish perspective. That's natural for anyone who is paid largely based on what they achieve as an individual. The way to get more of your team to achieve and exceed quota is to make decisions for the greater good of the team not individuals. 

Sales leaders should be like CEO's, they should always be working on the business not just in the business. That means making the inevitable changes to align with evolving market and customers needs. Nothing spreads negativity faster than being indecisive and sales people sometimes feed on indecisive situations as contributors to their own failings. The best sales leaders know that making a decision and taking action is almost always better than taking no action at all.

Know more

Consider this question for a moment, "do you think if your salespeople knew more about their prospects, they'd be more effective selling to them"? I suspect there won't be many naysayers amongst you. By agreeing with it you have to accept there has been negligence in focusing on this sufficiently.

Many companies invest in sales training with methodologies that are largely structured around asking questions so that they know stuff about who they are trying to sell to. Yet pretty quickly they fall back into bad habits and spend too much time on product or service differentiation rather than building and applying business acumen that adds value to prospects.

It amazes me why so many salespeople try and win a deal via a simple as the crow flies route? That rarely works, selling and buying is complex so the shortest route is normally the route to failure. Prospects don't need to be educated they need to be helped and the only way salespeople can do this is by understanding more about their prospects, especially their business problems or goals.

Salespeople generally don't know what they need to know about their prospects. To perpetuate the problem sales leaders don't know that their team don't know it because they don't take the time to understand this vital part of the sales cycle.

Think actions

Numbers make the sales world go around we all know that, but it's what you do that determines if you achieve them. Numbers are the outcome of the actions that sales people complete, no actions, or the wrong ones, can have a devastating effect on performance.

So, my final recommendation is to separate your pipeline and opportunity reviews with your salespeople. The weekly, monthly and quarterly reviews are so heavily biased towards number commitments and insufficient time is spent understanding the who, why, what, when and how of the opportunities.

Success comes from coaching not commanding your team, this requires a level of analysis way beyond numbers. You have to spend time understanding the intangibles of an opportunity and use your experience and knowledge to advise your team on their best course of action. Many of them will appreciate your help. 

Yes, it's still important to review the pipeline from a financial perspective to enable you to build your forecast report so I'm not saying you need to downgrade your focus on this area of your responsibility. But a strong and secure house needs to be built on great foundations, so look beyond the numbers and focus more on the knowledge and activities that lead to them and allocate more time in your calendars to work with your team members.

Whatever you decide to do, make it something that contributes to moving forwards for you, your team and your buyers, after-all it shouldn't be an us and them process, think facilitation and collaboration.

Let me know your thoughts on easy to implement ways of improving sales performance.