The Broken Sales Strategy and How to Fix it

Kill the sales quota!

I walked into @Lowes and I asked the floor guy for glue for a shower part. He said he could not suggest a glue to fix the problem and did not want to sell me something that would not work. I ended up ordering a new part to fix it from the original manufacturer.

Sale: $0. Trust building: Priceless

I walked into @HomeDepot asking for a glass cleaner for a gas fire place and the floor guy suggested I just get it serviced (which I said I wanted) and get a cleaning included in the price. I ended up getting a servicing and a free cleaning.

Sale: $0. Trust building: Priceless

I drove into @MrLube for an oil change and the technician took a quick look at my oil and he told me my oil was clean and did not need a change. I drove out on with my day.

Sale $0. Trust building: Priceless

Do you think any of the above employees work under a sales quota?

If they do, they should be rewarded for ignoring it. If they don’t their sales strategy and leadership should be rewarded.

Where do you think I now go for home renovations? Where do you think I go for an oil change?

The sales quota wins the battle, but looses the war.

The sales quota is short term focused not long term focused.

@TD_Canada bank is a perfect example of the now defunct sales quota:

“…employees admit they have broken the law at their customers' expense in a desperate bid to meet sales targets and keep their jobs”

TD Bank shares post worst day since 2009 after CBC story

The sales target KILLS the HUMAN SPIRIT.

The sales quota KILLS TRUST with customers.

There was a time when the sales quota was good. Information was not equally accessible and we needed the sales person to sell us something we needed but did not know we needed.

Thank you salesperson for meeting our needs.

But this model is now broken because everyone has the same information.

Trust is the new quota!

Are you building trust with your prospects or are you preoccupied by your quota?

Are you more focused on your sales pipeline than helping your client?

It’s not your fault, blame your sales strategy. But don’t complain about it. Influence it to change or change companies.

If you are a leader in sales, kill the quota and answer this very simple question:

How can you build genuine trust with your customers? Then apply common sense.

How have you been building trust with your customers?

How has this common sense approach impacted your sales?

SALES TARGETS:

So how can you measure the performance of your staff?

Instead of setting quota targets set happy customer targets.

Shift from a sales number to number of satisfied customers. You can easily measure satisfaction with repeat sales, up-sells, referrals, length of customer retention.

When you approach it this way you are more free to harness the creativity and common sense of your people.

Great sales people do this anyway, and as a result the quota is met. But it's all about what you focus on. If you focus on how many sales you get in a month versus how many happy customers you have, your energy is completely different and you are more likely to build trust with your customer.

In the end, this new found trust leads to happy customers.

Phil