What is going to close this month?!?

How often have any of you in sales heard this “What are you going to close this month?!?” How often have you managers asked your team this?

This often happens weekly, monthly, and quarterly. All of this effort is put into “what will close this month” when that is completely the wrong and opposite approach to success.

Do you think Bill Belichek starts screaming at his team in the 4th quarter “how are we going to score and win the game?” Obviously, that is ridiculous and has never happened. If that is the case then why do so many sales managers take the above approach? I contend it is due to a lack of planning, coaching, and preparation. Let me explain……

In order to lead your team to sales success you must start with a solid plan. A solid plan includes:

1.      Ideal customer profile

2.      Unique value proposition

3.      Strong and detailed sales process

4.      Sales support infrastructure

5.      Lead generation

There are many others, but you get the idea. The sales manager should strive to help the team sharpen the blade and stay at the top of their game through:

1. Ride along with the rep to customer meetings

2. Coaching sessions

3. Role play

4. Strategic discussions

5. Communicate Long-Term Goals

6. Hold More Effective Meetings

7. Share Insider Secrets

8. Offer regular training and opportunities to share best practices

9. Cross functional shadowing

10. Employ gamification strategies

Many managers know this but they choose to stay in the office, communicate via phone or email, and hold ineffective pipeline discussions.

You might ask, why are pipeline calls meaningless? They are completely self-serving for the manager. I speak to salespeople all over the country and this is a common complaint that bubbles up. Sales professionals are often on calls where they simply explain where they are in the process and try to give a reasonable time frame for when the deal will close. There is rarely enough effort spent on the tactical aspect of the process or creative discussion around how specifically to move an opportunity forward. When the rep is doing 80%+ of the speaking they are not getting the guidance and feedback needed to help them advance deals that might be stalling.

The way to change this trend is to approach the planning and front end of the process with the same energy and vigor that you do the “close.” If you do that the close should happen instead of forcing it.

Sun Tzu posits in his seminal work, “The Art of War,” that "Every battle is won or lost before it's ever fought".

If you keep that in mind how would you change your current process? What would you do differently with your sales team to help them succeed? Would you be more engaged at the BEGINNING OF THE MONTH discussing plans and then doing follow up at appropriate times? I submit that everyone will say YES but few managers actually do it. And thus the cycle continues.

If you could hire as many reps as possible and they would all succeed, how many would you hire? I was once asked this question by a consultant. The obvious answer was AS MANY AS I COULD! Obviously the reality is this doesn't happen……….... exactly. But his point was that with a more robust hiring strategy and proven sales process you could come close. At the time my sales team was starting to have more success, but we were far from perfect and some members of the team were not consistent. Over 6 months I worked tirelessly to strengthen the various aspects of sales success discussed at the beginning of this article. The results were amazing, and my company experienced many years of growth and success going forward. We were named to the region’s fastest growing companies for the next 5 years in a row until I exited in 2015.

 From that day forward I always flipped the script and coached my teams to invest the time up front which leads to success in the end. Focus on the process and not the close. There are many steps to a sales process and if done with discipline then you should never have to scream at the end of a month:

“What are you going to close this month?!?”