Does your sales team have a plan of attack?

Greta Schulz
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 As a principal of your organization, you clearly understand the importance of sales in the organization. You are wearing too many hats to play sales manager as well, but do you really know how they are doing? If they aren’t hitting their revenue goals, do you know why? Is it a viable reason? Do they have a battle plan to change that?

You have two challenges when your sales force prepares for battle:

No. 1. Like any kind of warfare, you have a distinct advantage when you can tap good and reliable intelligence. Here’s the problem: Your salespeople don’t get enough accurate intelligence about their prospects. As a result, their pipelines are filled with flaky opportunities. And your sales managers don’t have enough guts to call them on it.

Here’s the litmus test: When your salespeople submit their forecasts, do you or your managers “adjust” them down for realism? It’s typically easier for salespeople and their managers to discuss why they didn’t win business, instead of asking themselves the right questions before going to battle.

Here are some of the right questions:
• Can we win and should we pursue this opportunity?
• If yes, how do you know? What is the reasoning? A guess? A hunch?

To begin, ask your salespeople, “How much does it cost to win a new account?” Calculate the actual costs associated with generating a lead, a contact, an appointment, a proposal and a sale. Now, add in the opportunity cost of missed business they could have won if they weren’t wasting time on business that won’t close quickly.

No. 2. Your salespeople don’t do enough planning work before going to battle. Before going into battle again, make sure your salespeople can answer these questions (honestly):

• What are you trying to sell and, most importantly, why? Sounds simple until you actually try to quantify it.
• Is the project funded? What if there’s not enough? Who has discretionary use of the funds? Who can get more? Are we speaking to the right person here?
• What is the sale worth to the organization? Does the ROI justify the investment of time, money and effort?
• Have we sold this prospect anything in the past?
• Do you have an organizational chart? Do you have an inside coach?

Few salespeople understand the cost of pursuing sales and often fill their funnels with bad business. Fewer think through winning strategies before going into sales “battle.”

Successful sales professionals qualify vigorously and religiously before committing time and energy, so their closing ratios are 90 percent or better.

So, what are yours?

www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/print-edition/2012/08/24/does-your-sales-team-have-a-plan-of.html?page=all