ProActive Leadership Consulting - Training - Coaching

A reproducible, "How to" article from the pen of Dr. Millard MacAdam

Proactive Sales Force Development: How to Gain and Retain Customer-Satisfying Sales People ^© 

Article published in the Sales and Marketing Excellence Magazine

Does your company retain its own salaried sales people? If so, it is 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 implementing the following ten main steps in a ProActive Sales Force Development Plan!

Profiling - The first step toward gaining a stellar sales force is right hiring. Develop a profile of the competency, character, and motivational factors for one or two of your star sales performers. You can do this through interviews, on-job observation, and surveys like the PDP system that are used to generate modern computerized reports for employers. 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 the best customer-satisfying people possible.

Recruiting - Once you have an accurate profile of the competencies, character traits and motivational strengths needed to fill your sales positions excellently, you are ready to 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 reviewing wrong applicants applications. The language of the employment ad is focused on the key motivational traits, competencies and character traits possessed by your winners and when worded properly tends to attract excellent applicants and repel poor applicants.

Interviewing - After receiving, reviewing and prioritizing the applications received from your employment ad, it is recommend that you conduct 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. Determine the important things you want to discern from vocal patterns and answers to one to two key questions. Some examples of positive traits that can be assessed during a phone interview are calm, clear, friendly, genuine, logical, open, patient, mentally quick, relaxed, vital, listens 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. A person who can’t sell themselves on the phone will not be able to sell your products on the phone. Most sales begin with a phone contact.

The second interview surfaces what the applicant can do in terms of expressed competencies, character and motivational variables, not what they would do theoretically! Form an interview team of four to six people representing departments who will be interfacing and working with your new sales person. Develop a set of Proactive Interview Questions related to things you want to know about the person’s character, competency and motivation. Make sure these questions 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 actually did.

Selecting - Once your second level interviews are completed for your top applicants, use a consensus process to determine your top one or two candidates. When consensus is used to determine who gets the nod to join the 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 you need to invest in having your top candidates profiled as to motivation to determine their relative match with your star sales persons and their fit for your company culture.

Orientating - Once profiled and selected, the new sales person needs to receive a solid orientation to your company, 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 new sales person’s smooth transition and assimilation into your company’s sales team.

Training - Assess and determine the knowledge, skills and attitudes your new sales person already possesses and those that they need to receive training and coaching to acquire.  Have they mastered and 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 question focused on Features-Advantages-Benefits, conducting a firm closing, addressing prospect’s personal costs, focusing the prospect back on the deal, and showing gratitude.

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, lay out a realistic training and coaching schedule that will allow your new sales people 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. I’ve labeled the ideal process ProActive SuperVision. The goal is for the Sales Manager/Sales Team Leader and the Sales Person to be “professionally active”, collaborative and cooperative in gaining “super vision” into what is effective and what can be strengthened in the sales process. Leadership and supervision of the sales force has proven over and over again to be the 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 tool for ProActive SuperVision of your sales force. Go into the field and observe each of your sales people regularly. Don’t grab the lead and begin selling! Let them do the selling. Stick to observing and taking a few notes to use as reference points during your follow through conference.

Conferring – This is the second key tool for ProActive SuperVision of your sales force. The follow through conference to the observation should take place as soon as possible. Ideally right after leaving the customer’s place of business. During the conference, encourage the new sales person to describe what they did that they think facilitated the sales process and what they would do differently to facilitate it better in the future. Affirm their 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 tool for ProActive SuperVision of your sales force. 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 the Sales Manager as he or she engages in the role of Sales Force Leader.

The goal is developing the most effective sales people possible and gaining and retaining loyal customers and a solid call to close ration. The key skills for coaching 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 steps in 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.