If you are in charge of a sales team,  READ THIS ARTICLE.  It can do wonders for morale and productivity.  Yours and your team’s!    It will help you be a better manager, save time and get 2 goal.

In my earliest days of advertising sales, our team had a monthly sales goal, which was divided into individual sales rep goals.    These were broken down further into weekly and daily goals.  We could make our goal by renewing and upselling the businesses on our account list.  But our managers knew it was best to plan for setbacks like losing an account for all the many possible reasons.  And so – in addition to weekly dollar goals, we had weekly goals for making proposals to prospective advertisers.

Progress was monitored closely.  The copy deadline for our weekly publication was on Tuesdays at noon.  If we weren’t close enough to goal by Monday morning, our managers would  implement a back up plan.  Sometimes it was introducing a special section to sell, or a promotion, or sometimes it was a contest like whoever can bring in the most new ads today wins a gift certificate to Joe’s Pizzeria.

At our sales meeting on Wednesday morning, we met as a team and reviewed the resulting publication and sales, each of us posting our results on the board.  Cheers all around to those who made goal.  The meeting ended with around-the-table sales projections for next week.

This is a clear demonstration of  the Business Class Formula setting and achieving goals:

1. Clearly define the goal
2. Break it into small measurable parts
3. Monitor progress
4. Prepare for setbacks
5. Celebrate along the way
6. Evaluate

We were clearly hopping.

After about a year of this, I was promoted to a management position in another division of the company which also sold advertising but our publications were annual instead of weekly and that may be what helped  me notice the difference between hoping and hopping.

In my first year in this new job, I had a sales staff of 12, scattered all over the country.  Each one had a total goal, divided into daily goals.  Progress was monitored with charts on the wall – United Way style thermometers.  Each day, in person or by telephone, each one would  report to  me the number of ads he sold and the total dollar value.  I would cheer with each one who had met the goal for the day.  For each one who had more disappointing news, we would problem -solve a bit – and end the call with me encouraging  him that  tomorrow would  be better!

If disappointing reports became a trend with one of the reps, then I would get in the car or on a plane and visit in person – doing a bit of field coaching to try and pinpoint the problem.

All of this certainly kept everyone hopping.

I’ll have to be honest though – I was doing a heck of a lot of hoping that pompons would pull them through.

And it worked most of the time.  But sometimes there were surprises.  Sometimes the star salesperson who seemed to be raking it in at the start, came to a crashing halt.

And sometimes the seemingly hopeless slowpoke surprised us all with a victorious finish.  How and why did this happen?  I was willing to take blame for the first instance, but certainly couldn’t take credit for the latter.  And couldn’t identify any concrete lessons that would enable me to prevent or repeat accordingly.

I had a very smart boss – who suggested we break the sales process into smaller parts, things like initiating the sales call; getting in to see the decision maker; actually making the presentation; and then closing the sale.

We asked each salesperson to keep a stat sheet – recording each activity every single day – plus we asked that the number of sales closed be divided into renewal ads, new ads and bumpups.  I know this sounds like major micro-management.  But our intention was more research oriented.   We wanted the information so that we  could analyze the stats of our most successful sales reps in each market.  By doing so, we could determine how much of each sales activity was needed to make the goal and share this formula for success with other reps in the market which would enable them to make the best use of their time and energy.

Keep reading to see how this worked out.

While collecting and analyzing this data, some mysteries were explained.  The star rep got out of the gate fast, called on all her renewal accounts, sold the exact same ads   and then crashed – not understanding the importance of increasing current business – or of adding new.  While the slowpoke – was methodically, strategically working his territory  door by door resulting in a huge payoff at the end.

With our new performance standards in place, our reps knew how much of each sales activity was needed each day to reach their goal for the season.  They still reported daily sales, and they also reported daily activity.  By reviewing the amount of each specific sales activity, we knew which skills to coach – and eventually the sales rep could do this for himself.  For example – if over a period of time, a rep consistently missed the standard for number of calls made, we knew he needed help with time management.  If a rep consistently missed the standard for new ads sold – we knew she needed help with prospecting.

We believed so strongly that consistently reaching the daily performance standards was more important than making daily sales goals – that our credo became:

If you are making your sales goal and not your performance standards,
your success will be shortlived.

If you are making your performance standards and not your sales goal,
your sales will improve.

Before we had kept our reps hopping.  And us hoping that the stars would stay stars and that the slowpokes would become a pleasant surprise.

Now we could do more than hope.

Now we had a concrete way to keep them hoppin in the right direction.

Could this help you?

Are you using more hope than hop?

OR –  are you hopping a lot and still don’t have much hope?

If so, I hope you’ll stop hopping for a while.

Long enough to examine the hops needed to get to where you want to get.

This is tough work.  So get your coach to help  you.  If you don’t have one, we’d love to help you.

copyright 2010 – Business Class Inc

Other Resources to Help You and Your Team GET OFF THE LOG:

• Fool or Frog?
• Quote of the Week: Get Off the Log
• Quick List: 10 Questions to Get You Off the Log
• Brainteaser of the Week #24
• Little Hops to the Rescue
• Movie of the Week – Good Will Hunting