How Effective Is Your Sales Department

How would you score your current sales department between 1 and 10 ?

(with 1 being useless and 10 being outstanding and couldn’t be improved)
Why did you give that score?

You cant find enough good sales people
Dont have enough good leads
Poor at closing sales
Dont seem to have a clear sales structure
etc

Information on sales people performance

Up to 81% of sales people hires fail inside the first 12 months (Leadership Global Survey)
Every company is looking for a “great” salesperson with super human capabilities
In many companies the sales person is expected to be a master at
- creating a lead
- First meeting
- The initial follow up
- Presenting
- Negotiations
- Closing
How many people have you ever come across who are genuinely “great” salespeople. If you have been in business for over 25 years the answer is probably less than 5

Identifying the Tasks and Responsibilities

There are typically 6 prime sales roles (note the titles may change dependent upon the organisation)

Telemarketing
Internal Sales
Sales Executive
Key Accounts
Sales Manager
Sales Director

When you look at how your sales team is structured / resourced you need to consider

What sales outcomes are you looking for
Are you structured cost effectively

Looking for the perfect sales person

How many of you have tried to find the perfect sales person to help your business grow only to be disappointed when the sales dont roll in.
Lets consider your recruitment process did you conduct

Personality profiling
Social Media Checks
Go through references in detail

In many cases we are looking for sales force silver bullets but don’t invest the time in the recruitment process.
If a new sales person joins your company from a process, products, tools and sectors perspective what happens on the

first 30 days
first 60 days
first 90 days

It is critical to have clear objectives for each of the 4 disciplines.
Question : If you are not training your sales people where are they learning their sales skills?
Answer: In front of your customers and prospects

Sales is about systems and processes

Sales can be classified as covering four elements Vision, People, Process and Management