How can sales trainers and managers use BA to boost sales?
Observing and assessing what people to say and do in given sales situations is not new. It can have a powerful impact on sales effectiveness when done well. From sales ranging from inside to field sales, from direct to indirect, from simple to complex it is not so much which is the best system but which is most appropriate for the job you need to do. What follows is an overview of the case for BA in improving sales performance.
Why measure what people say or do?
Many of us are unaware of how skilled we are and, more importantly for development purposes, we are very often unaware of exactly how we produced such skilled purposes. We could, of course, ask skilled performers how they have reached their level of ability. Unfortunately, many of their highly skilled performances are by now unconscious with apparently little effort or planning. In fact various research studies of expert performance skills – music, sport, selling has shown such analysis can be really misleading. The prize though is worth it. If we can analyse top performers and are able to develop those skills in others the pay-offs are often double digit sales revenue increases. For example, in my own sales productivity projects, with a range of clients, have produced sales increase ranging from 25% to 100% using a BA based approach.
Clearly, if we want to illuminate why some people are more skilled than others we need to measure what is going on. A crucial factor is to make sure there is a balance between sales outcomes (Lagging Indicators) and the sales behaviors/process used to achieve such results (Leading Indicators). This balance shifts as the complexity and length of the sales increases. It becomes crucial to know how more skilled sales people achieve sales progress, such as:
Get invited to bid
Gain customer’s agreement to visit a reference site
Help the customer develop their RFP
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Being competitive comes from people who are well aligned with their organization’s intent and mission. If you take that extra care to recruit and select such people, my question is:
How easy is it to waste the opportunity you have created?
Certainly, having faith that “they will get it” is not a strategy. Without real investment of your time, onboarding will be hit and miss. So, let’s look at that investment and how best spend time with New Hires. Continue reading →
(Adapted from research by Gerald Grow – Teaching Learners to be Self-Directed and others)
by Nick Anderson & Bruce Lewolt
In her highly regarded book, The End of Competitive Advantage, Dr. McGrath shows that the demise of once dominate companies, like Kodak, RIM (Blackberry), and Circuit City, was predictable due to their rigid structures that were designed to extract maximum value from what they thought was a sustainable competitive advantage. Further, that in today’s environment successful corporate structures must be designed to identify and quickly respond to a transitory competitive advantages and then move on to the next as the market changes. This means that the ability of the employees in the organization to learn and adopt new behaviors may be the only truly sustainable competitive advantage. Such an organization cannot survive with a minimalist approach to learning effectiveness. Instead they need systems that produce sustained changes in behavior, robust improvements in performance and that facilitate efficient self-directed learning.
All of this means that good learning management systems (LMS) need to produce deep and lasting learning and both guide and accelerate the learner’s progression from dependence to self-direction and learning independence. But, typically there are difficulties when an LMS adopts one-size-fits all approach that does not adapt to each learner’s developmental stage. For example, where a learner needs direction and the system is non-directive.
Another dynamic is that learners have varying abilities of self-directedness. The same learner can be very self-directive in subjects where they have both a robust knowledge level and a strong belief in their ability to perform (self-efficacy), yet need a high level of direction in subjects where one or both of these factors are missing.
So LMS design needs to reflect the stages of Self-Directed Learning (SDL) based on the Situational Leadership Model (Hersey & Blanchard). This means that LMS designers need to create an effective progression from dependence to self-direction that adapts to each learner and subject.
The first stage is to consider goals that are directly related to learning. For example:
To create self-directed and life-long learners
To create online learning that adapts to different learners
To allow self-directed and dependent learning to co-exist
To allow curriculum developers to easily create courses adapt to the individual learner.
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Crazy as this seems, surveys and research show this is a common outcome.
There’s got to be a better way to ensure sales executives get a return from their sale training projects. We need to raise the bar in how we select Sales Training providers?
A poor investment?
What follows is my personal quest for improving the outcomes of such projects
Three reasons kept surfacing in conversations with sales managers:
1. How Much People Forget.
No matter how well we train sales people and they say they get it, typically most value gained erodes inside 30 days (80%+ is typical)
2. How hard people find it to change their natural behavior
They get frustrated easily, after seeing the value of change and experiencing progress during a training program, they slip back to their default behavior – their comfort zone.
3. Even when trained well, coaching is too little and too-outcome focused. And again people revert to their default behavior pattern.
Our experience is not unusual. All those trying to gain competitive advantage for their companies recognize these problems.
Self-coaching can be a like the blind leading the blind. At best, the rate of improvement is slow and inconsistent. At worst, the group perpetuates behavior that is not competitive. This is also true of peer coaching where they exert their influence based on equally inaccurate perceptions of what they do and too often steers the colleague in the wrong direction.What follows summarizes why self- and peer-coaching alone can be ineffective in developing sales peoples’ self-analytical abilities – A critical part of sales mastery. Then we overview how to solve this problem. The context is that since 2008 sales management can be summed up as, “Do More with Less” One result being that technology has accelerated the trend toward inside sales. In fact, there are now more inside sales people in USA than their traditional outside sales counter parts. In turn, this increasingly spawned the view that sales people can coach themselves entirely. This thinking is a logic based on increasing spans of control and a lack of sales managers both in ability and their inclination to coach their sales people Continue reading →
Over the last 25 years, sales executives have become jaded about sales training’s contribution to the bottom line. For many, memories of being pulled from the field for some grizzly sales training remain. Today there are hundreds such programs . . . from being customer value centered, to chasing foxes (tiring at best), to filling shark charts and don’t forget your green sheets!
Yes, these approaches point the way, but too many sales managers don’t realize how ingrained their salespeople’s habits really are. Even if they manage to get them to complete their “forms” they lack the awareness of when they are not in sync with different and changing customer needs. This is really prevalent in those sales people whose past success was in products that sold themselves. They got mentally lazy differentiating on value or service. For example, the telecommunications and IT markets in the early 2000s. Consequently, many are unaware changes before it’s too late, like:
A key finding of our research in a large mortgage loan client (Nick Anderson and Linda Marsh) was that 40-50% of mortgage loan customers surveyed had concerns about their house buying process. Unfortunately, Mortgage Loan Officers recognized only half of these people had such concerns. Also, Mortgage Loan Officers thought that half the people who didn’t have concerns did.
So, one key factor on offering help and advice is correctly identifying people
who have concerns they need help with.
Unfortunately, between two minds there is often a breeding environment for misunderstanding and distortion. It’s where phraes like “I don’t think we are on the same page”
originates. Many factors influence such distortions. These include:
style and structure of the communication
social climate between the sender and recipient of a message,
integration of the message with other experience and learning
Sound weird, doesn’t it? Truth is . . . being tied to one training methodology simply isn’t productive.
There’s no “perfect training methodology” – whether it be focused on selling, managing or coaching. Any training should Advance Competence while Advancing Sales. Complex sales organizations need methodological purpose rather than one methodology piled on top of existing methodologies.
Additionally, people have been trained a lot in their lives. It seems obvious that we should also give them credit for the concepts, processes, and skills they have already learned. Adding methodologies (no matter how good they are) risks creating indifference. We know indifference does not change behaviors! Conversely, building commitment relies on giving your people and managers credit for what they already know, while at the same time changing behaviors that do not work.
The really effective sales organization has a number of characteristics, for example:
Skills and strategies suited to their market outstanding products or services
In-depth understanding of how these products can solve customer problems
Appropriate rewards and performance measures
Sales support system which actually helps to sell, not just administer
An ability and willingness to learn
Full effectiveness, however, can be achieved only if everyone:
Has a clear and shared vision of where the company is heading
Understands the strategy for getting there and their part in the process
Is rewarded for playing their part
Focuses obsessively on the customer
Some barriers to effectiveness are obvious – if the products are poor then no amount of sales skill can compensate sufficiently to build success. Many barriers are more subtle, and can sap the strength of the company over a long period without being tackled. Such problems usually fall under one the following three headings:
Misalignment
Inflexibility
Internal Focus
Misalignment
Feels like a bad back
There are many ways in which Misalignment is introduced into organization structures and processes; at best they generate unhelpful tensions and frustrations, at worst they lead to departmental rifts and sabotage. Common examples are:
Poor alignment of individuals’ expectations, departments and the company as a whole
E.g. the sales force seeks job interest by selling bespoke solutions, while the company is trying to standardize its offerings
Incentives for interdependent departments or people are not congruent
E.g. Sales force targeted on increased volume, administration targeted on decreased costs performance management process runs counter to company strategy
Sales management sets 30 day revenue targets, while company exhorts the salespeople to develop major accounts for the long-term
Salespeople are expected to cross-sell for other Divisions or countries, but are not rewarded for so doing
Sales management is “do as I say, not as I do”
E.g. Managers use a hard ‘push’ style, while advocating a ‘pull’ or consultative style with their people
Doing what we’ve always done what is going to be needed due to changing technology, markets and competition
E.g. When a monopoly supplier meets competition for the first time so the products no longer ‘sell themselves’
When new products address a different market – for example, printer sales force find themselves selling systems not peripherals
Gaps between stated values and actual values
E.g. “Our customers are our greatest asset ” while salespeople refer to them as “Buyers are liars”
“Our employees are our greatest asset”, while managers show little concern and even less investment
Inflexibility
Many markets are now more turbulent and unpredictable than ever before, and success comes only to those who are ‘quick on their feet’. Unfortunately many players suffer from at least one of the following:
Their sales organization structure and roles don’t match those of the customer
E.g. they offer multipoint direct contact with sales, service, technical support, while the customer wants single point contact
Geographical location of functions and authority doesn’t match the customer’s
Their organization is inherently unresponsive to change
E.g. in rapidly evolving markets, companies operating a traditional hierarchical and functional structure find it hard to compete with those successfully using a cross-functional team approach
• Their people are resistant to change
E.g. Salespeople who have been adequately successful for years have become “order takers”, and the entertaining approach to account development
Managers who find it hard to let go of their traditional, power-oriented style and allow staff the space and authority to really contribute
Technical people who are unwilling to take on the sales role and don’t believe in the new technology
Internal focus
True customer focus involves a lot more than ‘customer service training’; it means that no aspect of the organization should be free from an all-pervading concern with delivering what the customer wants, and a bit more. It means taking your cue from the customer in areas which traditionally have been internally focused, for example:
Company and/ or departmental structure
E.g. Split on arbitrary product/technical grounds, so that several sellers approach the same individual
Performance measures
E.g. Call rates, scrap rates, production volumes, instead of response times, satisfaction ratings, service call-outs
Perception of what is being sold
E.g. In terms of a product rather than the results of using it – a security system rather than peace of mind, a training course rather than increased sales effectiveness
Conclusion
There is no one best sales organization structure, incentive scheme, or strategic approach. If there were, we would not see the huge diversity which exists in the real world, and change would anyway render it obsolete.
The effective organization is never complacent, and audits itself rigorously and constantly, seeking out and remedying any instances of inconsistency, inflexibility and internal focus. It also never fools itself into believing that change=progress;. change follows cycles of learning of what works and what doesn’t, not from a fear of stagnation.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Contact: Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD E-mail I Web I Linkedin
If we can analyse top performers and are able to develop those skills in others the pay-offs are often double digit sales revenue increases. For example, in my own sales productivity projects, with a range of clients, have produced sales increase ranging from 25% to 100% using a BA based approach.
The Crispian Advantage 