Sales Performance: How to Energize Your Teams in 2019? (1/3)

“Sales performance.” Two words that, in an ideal world, should be pleonastic.

However, achieving objectives by Sales teams is more challenging than ever today: the world is changing, and with it, the entire sales ecosystem (The Future of the Sales Profession, Graham Hawkins, 2017):

• The customer has become master of the commercial relationship. This position of strength represents a historical shift for Sales teams, who were accustomed in the past to having the upper hand over their contacts. This reversal of power dynamics has occurred thanks to an abundance of immediately available information, conducive to comparing suppliers and putting them in competition. As such, clients and prospects demand competitive offers from Salespeople, with ever-shorter deadlines, and high requirements for the quality of “deliverables.” Offer personalization is becoming a key purchasing criterion, rendering old “off-the-shelf” solutions obsolete.
• Salespeople, for whom salary expectations must be accompanied by a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment at work, with a company culture and values such as recognition for work accomplished and team spirit, which are all factors in motivating and recruiting/retaining talent. The legal framework itself is evolving in this direction, with, for example, the 2017 Macron ordinances on QWL (Quality of Working Life) which also question work organization methods.
• Shareholders are increasing their expectations for company results, in a context where social plans remain a solution for cost reduction and a lever for profitability. Faced with this threat, Salespeople must justify their effectiveness, while alternative solutions considered less expensive (call centers / online sales) simultaneously question the cost of sales. For example:
  • In 2018, Engie accelerated the reorganization of its sales force towards “low-cost countries” (already initiated by transferring part of the activity to Morocco, Portugal, and Mauritius), with a wave of delocalization notably to Senegal and Cameroon… “Countries where tele-advisors selling gas and electricity offers to French customers are paid less than 500 euros per month, three times less than in France.”
  • The cost of an e-commerce site is approximately 1/4 lower than the cost of a single Salesperson (Death of a B2B Salesman, Forrester, 2015). By 2020, 1 million B2B Salespeople could lose their jobs due to the sole impact of e-commerce.
  • Artificial Intelligence also threatens the sustainability of Salespeople’s jobs: 95% of Salespeople will be replaced by Artificial Intelligence within 20 years (Matthew King, 2016).
• The competitive landscape is transforming under the effect of digitalization, with the emergence of new, more competitive players putting pressure on the market. For example, with notably:
  • Alan: a French insurtech (online mutual insurance solution) created in 2016, which revolutionizes health insurance through a simple, comprehensive, and fully digitized offer, presented as a very attractive alternative to traditional insurance. In 2018, Alan raised nearly 23 million euros from recognized investors: Xavier Niel, Index Venture, CNP, Partch, and Portag3 Venture (Canada). The startup has 850 corporate clients and aims for 100,000 people covered by 2021.
  • N26: a fully digital German bank that relies on international transfer technology (SEPA transfers). This very intuitive solution is currently highly popular: N26 indeed has over 500,000 customers in the 17 European countries where it operates, including 100,000 in France. The Berlin startup targeted 600,000 to 800,000 users by the end of 2017 and established itself in the United States and England in 2018 (raised 130 million euros).

In this context, the position of Salespeople, “between a rock and a hard place,” can easily undermine their motivation. This drop in enthusiasm is antithetical to the raison d’être of these populations, who represent the dynamism and proactive force of the company “out there”: with prospects and clients.

The numbers speak louder than words: In 2011 in the United States, 63% of Salespeople met their targets. In 2016, only 55% did (The Future of the Sales Profession, Graham Hawkins, 2017).

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Boost Sales Performance: 3 Approaches

Given the previous observations, it is legitimate, if not absolutely necessary, to ask about the future of sales performance in a context where most indicators are red for the future of the Sales profession, and this at all levels: from Sales Director to Sales Manager, including Middle Management.

As such, this series of articles proposes exploring 3 avenues regarding the logics and operating modes to foster within teams to develop motivation and engagement, key factors in sales performance:

• Do not reduce sales performance to achieving results: The Hidden Part of the Iceberg
• Evolving Sales Professions towards greater responsibility and added value: The Take-off
• Leveraging digital evolutions to increase motivation: The Augmented Salesperson

Today we will explore the first avenue mentioned previously: “Do not reduce sales performance to achieving results: The Hidden Part of the Iceberg”.

Do not reduce sales performance to achieving economic results: The Hidden Part of the Iceberg

Consider the sales process as a key criterion for evaluating sales performance.

The unequivocal judgment passed on Salespeople’s performance, considered almost exclusively by economic results (Revenue/Margin), is a reductive and simplistic interpretation of Sales teams’ actions. This framework lends itself to only two comments: “You met your targets, that’s good, do the same next month,” and the other “You didn’t meet your targets, get moving next month to change things.”

From this perspective, the role of the Manager and the Sales Manager is degraded: one becomes the blind taskmaster of performance, while the other is confined to the role of an executor threatened by the stick or motivated by the carrot. As a result, underperformance is regularly highlighted in team meetings, while good economic results, considered normal, are passed over in silence.

In any case, this “analysis method” based on a single indicator greatly disempowers and infantilizes teams.

Considering sales performance means, in our opinion, taking into account for each member of the Sales team an exhaustive view of the journey covered, and not just the destination.

No diver will reach 50 meters deep without some well-defined preliminary actions that cannot be skipped: checking that their tank is open or that they have taken their own fins and not those of a neighbor who wears size 42… Similarly, the adventurer setting out to conquer Kilimanjaro visualizes their ascent in stages, without thinking about the destination. Even if invisible, these processed and intermediate actions constitute a gradual methodology that guarantees success.

The same applies to Salespeople: achieving the monthly objective depends on a process to be followed. To claim otherwise is to say that success depends on chance. This is not the case.

Sales performance is an iceberg whose visible part is the final closing achieved by your teams. It is the consequence of a long, often invisible process: the submerged part of the iceberg. By examining it, one can truly understand where the teams stand. The submerged part of the iceberg allows one to identify their difficulties in specific parts of the sales process: who struggles to generate appointments, who fails to engage a prospect over the phone, who doesn’t get past the first meeting… This targeted approach then allows for the implementation of corrective actions and personalized training – more economical and effective than large training sessions on broad topics – which also serve as a motivational factor for your teams and which we will now explore.

Develop individualized training plans, focused on key areas of improvement

In terms of “job-specific” training, the common mistake is to train Salespeople indiscriminately on multiple skills. The “coach posture” of the Sales Manager, on the contrary, requires defining a single priority individualized training based on each person’s needs. At the intersection of a coach and a sports doctor, the Manager must be able to quantitatively diagnose, for each Salesperson, the missing skill that significantly impacts their individual performance. Once this targeting is done, it is then necessary to create a training system aimed at correcting this deficiency, without getting sidetracked by other less significant weaknesses that can be addressed later. This targeting allows for training cost savings and time efficiency by prioritizing training that will provide maximum leverage on the Salesperson’s effectiveness.

The best metrics to track to define each person’s “missing” skill vary depending on the company, but examples include: leads generated, demos completed, number of clients.

Once these metrics are identified and measured, further in-depth work is still necessary to determine the reason for poor performance. Mark Roberge, author of “The Sales Acceleration Formula,” then suggests “peeling back the onion” to precisely determine the insufficient skill. For example, if a Salesperson fails to secure a first meeting with a prospect and conduct an initial demo, Mark Roberge proposes measuring the two factors on which the success of such an endeavor depends. Thus, anyone wishing to understand the reason for a Salesperson’s poor Demo / Leads ratio must “break down” this KPI to find what most influences performance:

• Ratio “Leads worked to connect” (first call): If this metric is poor, the Salesperson has difficulty contacting their interlocutor for the first time, “picking up the phone.”
• Ratio “Connect to demo” (demo after first contact): If this metric is poor, the Salesperson has difficulty capturing their interlocutor’s attention during the first call.

Two Salespeople with the same insufficient Demo / Leads ratio may be struggling with two different things. There is therefore a real need to precisely identify the source of the difficulty and avoid the pitfall of overly generic training applicable to everyone.

We will soon explore our second avenue regarding the logics and operating modes aimed at fostering motivation and engagement, key factors in increasing sales performance: Evolving Sales Professions towards greater responsibility and added value: The Take-off.

Other Articles You might be Interested In

• Sales Performance: The Keys to Motivating Your Teams in 2019? (2/3)
• Sales Performance: How to Motivate Your Teams in 2019? (3/3)