Do you want to radically increase your turnover? Whether it's for products, services or an idea, the foundation of a business rests on the ability to sell. When it comes to selling and closing deals, your prospects don't want to be told stories. Having qualities as a salesperson means knowing how to listen attentively, have a critical mind and apply your sales techniques effectively.
As CEO, you are aware of the importance of having and building a successful team that will advance the company for you and that will apply your business tactics. For this, your sales force must follow these best practices:
1 - Always prospect regularly
Sellers shouldn't run out of sales opportunities for one month and then work harder to make up for the next month. They must remain regular in prospecting. Companies face erratic results because they tolerate inconsistency when it comes to prospecting and bringing new opportunities into the pipeline.
Advice for sellers:
- Put prospecting beaches in your agenda every week AND respect these dedicated times
- Be prepared when you start your prospecting
- Cut yourself off from distractions such as emails
2 - Always ask for references and introductions
When representatives speak with prospects and customers, they should always ask for references and introductions Do you want to radically increase your turnover? Whether it's for products, services or an idea, the foundation of a business rests on the ability to sell. When it comes to selling and closing deals, your prospects don't want to be told stories. Having qualities as a salesperson means knowing how to listen attentively, have a critical mind and apply your sales techniques effectively.
3 - Always keep a pipeline full
In connection with the first point, it is absolutely essential not to wait for the pipeline of opportunities to be empty before prospecting. You have to know the average length of the sales cycle to know when an opportunity that enters the pipeline should end.
If there are enough prospects entering the pipeline, sales will follow naturally. It is important to stay constant. Saw tooth efforts will only give you roller coaster results.
Tips for sellers:
- Make sure to add sufficient sales opportunities (number of opportunities) and with a good level of quality (value of opportunities)
- Once the opportunities have entered the pipeline, they must advance to the conclusion by following the sales process or be disqualified. Clearly, there must be constant movement in the pipeline.
Tips for sales managers:
- Do regular pipeline reviews with each of your representatives.
- Make sure the weighted value of the pipeline is consistently aligned with the sales targets.
- Be firm and disqualify opportunities that seem to be abandoned if there is no next step defined by the representative.
4 - Always keep your team accountable
The role of sales managers is to keep the sales force accountable for the sales growth objectives and the plan that has been developed to achieve these objectives. The best way to keep a sales team accountable for the plan and activities everyone needs to do is to meet daily.
A 5-7 minute meeting each morning will keep the team dedicated to what they need to accomplish. This will quickly expose any gap between expectations and what actually happened.
5 - Always monitor behaviors and activities
Tracking activities and behaviors is the only real way to proactively manage sales. By looking at daily and weekly activities and behaviors, you are aware of the results to come and you can set up an action plan to correct any deviation before it is too late ... which can mean before the end of the month or quarter, when the quotas must be reached.
Conversely, results indicators such as turnover or profitability of sales allow us to make observations. While these indicators are very important, they do not allow decisions to be made early enough to avoid significant discrepancies between reality and forecasts.
6 - Always follow the sales process
The sales process must be a proven recipe that can be reproduced in order to achieve sales goals. It is through the repetition of this sales process that it is possible to develop sales in a predictable manner.
To increase sales revenue, you have to work constantly to optimize the sales process. It should be designed specifically for your business, market, industry, product, and to help the sales force overcome specific obstacles they will encounter during a sale.
Today, technology helps optimize sales processes thanks to data entered in CRMs such as Membrane.
7 - Always be firm on prices
When sellers are not firm on prices during a quote, this creates a situation in which the customer thinks they can always get a better price. Sales managers who accept this practice from their salespeople lose critical percentages of margin for the business and show that it is acceptable to give a discount to a potential customer in order to close the sale.
I have seen companies where sales managers spend more than 50% of their time handling price exceptions given to customers over time.
To increase sales, you have to focus more on value than on price.
8 - Always have the urgency to conclude
Be careful, you have to understand the concept of urgency to conclude. It is not a question of wanting to “close” the customers at all costs during the first meeting or of putting any pressure on the customer. Representatives can also interpret a request for quotation as a sign that the client is ready to sign, when he simply wants to obtain information from the seller.
Representatives must have the sense of urgency to conclude when all stages of the sales process have been completed and the customer must make a purchasing decision.
9 - Always coach your sales team
Coaching representatives is the number one priority for the most effective sales managers. They spend at least 50% of their time coaching.
Often, coaching is seen as a very different task from what it actually is!
Coaching can be done formally or informally, but in any case it must be done on a daily basis. To start coaching representatives individually, two activities should be favored: preparation before the meeting and post-meeting debriefing.
10 - Never accept excuses
Apologizing often becomes part of an organization's sales culture despite the efforts of senior management. These excuses diminish the ability of the sales force to grow sales regularly.
There will never be an ideal situation in which representatives can achieve all of the objectives. Sales forces must therefore deal with fluctuations in the economy, aggressive competition, the company's selling prices and other factors. These are elements over which sales representatives and directors have no direct control, which is why they are the most often excuses provided to explain the lack of performance.
Sales managers therefore have an important job to do to fight against excuses and help representatives work on the factors they control, such as their prospecting and sales activities or compliance with the sales process.
To remember
To successfully increase sales regardless of the context, sales forces including managers need to structure themselves, follow the best practices listed above and be consistent in efforts and improvement.
Obviously, referrals and introductions generate better conversion ratios compared to all other sources of potential customers. The main reason sellers don't get referrals is that they don't ask for them! Remind them that 80% of introductions lead to sales.
