My ProActive Leadership firm is a Member Firm of the FUNdamental SELLING ^© Consortium of business consulting firms. We collaborate together to help small to mid sized companies strengthen their sales force selection, sales force training, sales force management/leadership and sales force supervision. 

Our first focus is on helping you to consistently hire only the top 10% sales people who will satisfy your customers and best fit your company culture, products and services. We then help you effectively train, deploy, and supervise your sales people so they better gain and maintain stellar call to close ratios and long-term, satisfied customers for your company. 

Does your company retain three or more of its own salaried inside or outside sales people? If so, you are in a good position to build a stellar, sales team using the sales force development processes that will gain and retain more satisfied and long-term customers. Salaried sales people are more beholding than reps to a company and its sales manager and sales force leader. This is because the financial leverage a salary provides better opens the door for “getting what you expect and inspect with respect”. Salaries make getting a mutual accountability process, participation in training, skills improvement, and solid performance results easier.

If you have significant sales force turnover, it is at a tremendous cost to your company’s potential profit margins. These lost profits can be recovered by initiating a well executed, ten-step ProActive Sales Force Development Plan that will help you gain and retain the right sales people for your particular company… sales people who gain and retain more loyal customers and maintain strong call to close ratios at the same time.

Have you calculated thoroughly what wrong hiring and sales force turnover is costing your company? Dr. Edwin D. Kellwood (College of Business Administration, Cal Poly Pomona, California) did research several years ago on the cost to a company of hiring the wrong sales person. His research indicated that the typical cost of recruitment, screening, selection, training, salary and first-year mistakes for a novice salesperson is about $137,000. He also found that first year attrition rates are from 25 to 75 percent. The main reason he stated for so many sales people leaving sales positions that first year is lost motivation related to unmet job expectations. His conclusion from the research was that the costs to a company of hiring a wrong sales person tower over advertising, sales promotion, public relations, or other marketing-related expenditures.

High turnover and less than stellar sales performance does not have to be an assumed cost of conducting business! These costs can be easily converted to profits! How? By engaging us to help you effectively implement the following ten elements of a ProActive Sales Force Development Plan!

Profiling - We help you take the first step toward gaining a stellar sales force which is hiring right. We help you develop a profile of the competency, character, and motivational factors for one or two of your star sales performers. We help you use the PDP profiling system to generate modern computerized individualized employee management and motivation factors reports. These reports surface the natural motivational variables needed to be successful within a given company and a given position. 

The concept of profiling your top performers and then profiling your top applicants to determine if they are the right “fit” for your company applies not only to your sales positions. It applies to all positions in your company if you expect to hire the best performing and customer-satisfying people possible.

Recruiting - Once we help you get an accurate profile of the competencies, character traits and motivational strengths needed to fill your sales positions excellently, we will help you draft a “magnetic” employment ad which will attract people of like strengths and repel people who do not have the strengths you desire. This will save you time by not having to review applications from inferior applicants. The language of the employment ad is focused on the key motivational traits, competencies and character traits possessed by your winners. When worded properly, this kind of ad attracts excellent applicants and repels poor applicants.

Interviewing - After reviewing and prioritizing the applications received from your employment ad, we help you prepare for conducting two levels of interviewing.

The first level of interviewing is a two to five minute telephone screening interview that helps you determine if the applicant is someone you think should be invited to the second, more in-depth interview. The focus is on determining the important things you want to discern from vocal patterns and answers to a few key questions. Some examples of positive traits that can be assessed during a phone interview are determining if a person is calm, clear, friendly, genuine, logical, open, patient, mentally quick, relaxed, vital, listening well, direct, and warm. Some examples of negative traits are unfriendly, indirect, inattentive, lethargic, tense, slow to grasp, impatient, closed, scattered, harsh, insincere, gruff, fuzzy, and hurried. It also gives you the opportunity to assess the sales person’s telephone selling capabilities. 

Most sales begin with a phone contact. We have found that a person who can’t quickly sell themselves to you on the phone will not be able to effectively sell your products or services to your prospective customers. 

The second interview surfaces what the applicant can do in terms of expressed competencies and character and motivational variables, not what they would do theoretically!  We coach you in how to develop an interview team of four to six people representing departments that will be interfacing and working with your new sales person. We help you develop a set of Proactive Interview Questions related to things you want to know about the person’s character, competency and motivation. We help you design these questions to make sure they are likely to surface what the person has done, not what they would do. An example of a ProActive Interview Question design related to the competency of “planning” is, “What is the toughest planning effort you have ever undertaken, what steps did you take in planning it, and what results did you achieve as a result of your planning efforts? The goal is to get them to tell you and your interview team their stories about what they have actually done.

Selecting - Once your second level interviews are completed for your top applicants, we will coach you on how to use a powerful ProActive Consensus Process to determine your top one or two candidates. When this consensus process is used to determine who gets the nod to join your company, all members of the interview team and the people in the departments they represent tend to have a stake in helping the new employee succeed. It is at this point we help you have your top candidates profiled to determine their relative match with your star sales persons and their fit for your company culture.

Orientating - Once profiled and selected, we help you plan a solid orientation to your company for your new sales persons. This will include your company’s governing operating values, unique factors about your company’s culture, your products and services, and clear, written performance expectations. Getting everything up front and clear is critical to a new sales person’s smooth transition and assimilation into your company’s sales team.

Training - We coach you on how to assess and determine the knowledge, skills and attitudes your new sales person already possesses and those for which they need to receive training and coaching to acquire.  We help you determine if they have mastered and can demonstrate the basics of FUNdamental SELLING which include facilitating the bridge from marketing to sales by: identifying core benefits, investigating the gap, summarizing the gap and its consequences, orchestrating a flowing presentation, using follow up questions focused on benefits, advantages and features, conducting a firm closing, addressing the prospect’s personal costs, focusing the prospect back on the buying decision, and showing gratitude.

We coach you on how to engage your new sales person in role playing and have them demonstrate the sales processes they use to gain and retain customers. Once their growth and development needs are established, we help you lay out a realistic training and coaching schedule that will allow your new sales person to master and apply the sales competencies needed to successfully sell your particular products and services to your particular types of customers.

Supervising - Once your new sales person is engaged in the selling process, he or she needs and deserves to be supported by excellent supervision. We have labeled the ideal process ProActive SuperVision. The goal is for the Sales Manager/Team Leader and the Sales Person to be “professionally active” through collaboration and cooperation in gaining “super vision” into what is effective and what can be strengthened in the sales process. After right hiring, leadership and supervision of the sales force has proven over and over again to be the second most important factor in developing and retaining stellar, high producing sales persons who master, use and refine their sales skills.

Observing – This is the first key function for the ProActive SuperVision of your sales force. We coach your sales manager/team leader in preparing to go into the field and observe each of your sales people regularly--- without grabbing the lead and doing the selling themselves! It is critical to let the sales person do the selling. We coach your sales manager/team leader on how to stick to observing and taking a few notes to use as reference points during the follow through conference.

Conferring – This is the second key function for the ProActive SuperVision of your sales force. The follow through conference after the observation should take place as soon as possible. Ideally right after leaving the customer’s place of business. We coach your sales manager/team leader in what to do during the conference to encourage the new sales person. The focus is on getting the sales person to describe what they did that they thought facilitated the sales process and what they would do differently to facilitate it better in the future. We coach your sales manager/team leader on how to affirm the sales person's correct insights and then move on to providing them with corrective feedback and skills coaching in a collaborative, supportive and cooperative way.

Coaching- This is the third key function for the ProActive SuperVision of your sales force. We show you how It is wise and effective to promote peer coaching among your sales team members. In initiating peer coaching, the coaching process needs to be first modeled and used by your sales manager/team leader as he or she engages in the role of  Sales Team Leader. We coach them on the "how to" of doing this.

Your company's goal should be to develop the most effective sales people possible, those who effectively gain and retain loyal customers and a solid call-to-close ratio. We coach your sales team leader and sales force members in acquiring the key skills for coaching.  These are effective interpersonal communication, task analysis, coaching to an objective, monitoring and adjusting, promoting retention, reflective interviewing, active listening, observing, and modeling.

Now you have them! Ten key elements of a ProActive Sales Development Plan that will bring your sales people and your company the rich rewards of more easily and quickly gaining and retaining more loyal customers.

With the economy being more and more competitive, the sales people responsible for raising your revenues need all the help they can get… inquire today!