The Value Of A Great Sales Team
Sales is the lifeblood of any business.
To be a healthy and functioning person, our organs must function corectly to help maintain homeostasis and balance. The inability to maintain homeostasis may lead to death or a disease. In this article, we liken the following organs to the key roles in an ‘organisation’
1. Heart – represents ‘Leadership’
2. Head – represents ‘Management’
3. Lungs – represents ‘Salespeople’
4. Blood – represents ‘Sales’
The truth is that all our organs are important, and each has a purpose. For the purpose of our little analogy, we can acknowledge that even if we possess a good quality heart or head, if there insufficient and inadequate blood supply, the entire organisation faces fatality. Another important point is that our organs and entire body function best in certain desirable environments.
The present business environment is a challenging one for many organisations. If we are to succeed today, then effective leadership will provide the direction and inspiration needed to move forward. Management would ensure that the necessary resources are used to achieve the organisations goals. Efficiency would mean low input and high output, and systems must designed to aid organisational effectiveness and efficiency.
Consider your sales force. How many sales people do you have? … How many of these are your top performers?…What would happen to your business if the remaining sales people were performing like your top performers? Could you possibly double or triple your turnover?
How do we fix these?
1. Hire Right
2. Train Right
3. Fire Right
4. Lead, Manage and Systemise Right
Here are some of my rag-bag ideas in context of the above 4 points:
• It’s unrealistic in a South African environment to simply fire staff. Our labour laws require that we do all we can to help and support employees to reach their highest individual performance. It’s an option only viable as the last resort, and a manager – you need to do our homework.
• Consider improved ways of hiring sales people in the future. Check CV’s, references, educational background and use profiles/assessments to measure candidates against company and management expectation. Increase the odds of getting it right the first time!
• Train existing staff. Continuous improvement and continuous professional development can do a world of difference to increasing sales. Go back to the basics, nothing beats and builds on that. Consider technology boosters and web leverage. Train sales people to be experts
• “Never make your best sales person the sales manager”
• Get organised in your team!
• Forget fear motivation; that old “I’m the boss, you the worker” mentality. This is reactive management
• Use incentives carefully and intelligently. ‘Stick and carrot’ has lots of limitations. This is functional management.
• Get your sales people to be self motivated. This is proactive management. Your sales manager will not have to manage people; but rather systems
• Get outside help if necessary to kick start a new purpose and drive. Let the sales results pay for it.
• Encourage your sales people to read current sales books. Let them share and inspire the rest of the team.
• Reward results; recognise efforts. Big difference.
Our present environment is not the problem. It demands creative leaders, dedicated managers and excited sales people. Belief systems change through knowledge, perceived solutions and experience. Just one winning experience can shift us forever. Let’s get started!
About the Author
Anil Salick is the founder and managing member of Synergistic Outcomes (established in 2003). He has been involved in training and development for the last 12 years, and has functioned in facilitation, marketing and sales, consulting, design and development, management, leadership and administration. He has designed, developed and facilitated numerous learning programmes and interventions in small, medium and large sized corporations, as well as governments in South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Namibia and Swaziland.
Described as a great facilitator with patience, wisdom, humour, wit, understanding, sincerity; Anil has the ability to challenge participants to grow and expand. His step by step, sequential yet creative, intellectual yet emotional facilitation equips delegates to develop space, consciousnesses and awareness.
Anil has a number of hobbies, which include: fitness and gym; reading, writing, science, spirituality, personal growth, fishing, yoga, helping others and making a difference. He is soon to launch his first book.
Anil lives in sunny Durban, South Africa. He is married to Nounouche (the prettiest girl from the island of Madagascar) and they have 3 children: Andrea, Jashley and Tahj.
For more information visit: www.anilsalick.com or www.synout.co.za or follow Anil on twitter at http://twitter.com/synout
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