Not to oversimplify, or to over complicate things either, but at the end of each month, the business development professional needs to answer the “help me/hurt me” question.
A couple of months ago, I was facilitating a meeting with one of my clients. This was a sales management meeting. We had the regional managers, a couple members of the sales team and the owner team in the meeting.
This company had experienced great growth the previous years, but the first quarter of this year was a bit lackluster.
Sales performance was our topic of discussion. First of all, this is a great company that has performed very well historically. They recently hit a brief sales slump. During our sales planning meeting, one of the regional sales managers mentioned that he had a manager in years past that made all of the sales reps answer the “help me/hurt me” question at the end of each month. This question was asked and answered in front of all of the other sales professionals.
The “help me/hurt me question” is really the right question to ask and answer. In other words, did you, as a selling professional, help the company last month, or did you hurt the company last month?
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a big fan of self-assessment and candor when evaluating operating performance. If either of those two elements is missing from the performance review process, a sales organization will consistently under-perform. You simply cannot optimize selling performance when the producer does not accurately and candidly assess the cause-and-effect relationship between their sales-related actions and their production results.
The “help me/hurt me” illustration is a simple but accurate way of assessing sales performance, regardless of whether your sales cycle is long or short.
Productive
A sales producer hitting both their activity goals and their production goals is clearly in the “help me” quadrant. They are a solid contributor to the success of the company. Their sales related activities are appropriate to support the achievement of ongoing selling success.
Skill development
A sales producer hitting their activity goals while consistently missing production goals is frequently someone in need of additional skills development. The successful sales professional clearly understands that selling success does not come without putting in the effort and hitting the activity goals. Therefore, when you’ve got a sales professional working hard from an activity perspective, but not hitting their production goals, this is usually an indication that the sales professional is in need of some skills development assistance. They may have great rapport building skills and solution development skills, but need help learning how to close the sale. This may be their only missing ingredient to ensuring ongoing selling success. Or, they may need help ensuring:
1. They are calling on the best prospects (ideal client profile).
2. Their product knowledge is up to speed.
3. They are using the corporate marketing material properly.
4. Their presentation skills are up to speed.
5. Their communications skills are up to spee
They understand and are following all stages to the identified sales process.
7. They are using up front contracts to gain buy-in and commitment through-out the sales process.
Lucky
If a salespersons activity is down but their performance is up, this person is lucky. Let’s assume this person is riding the wave from a previous period when their activities were at appropriate levels creating the current satisfactory sales performance. This may be a good producer that has been tied up (and distracted) with a number of big projects, but unless they get on the stick from an activity perspective, once the existing projects have closed, their pipeline will likely need to be built up once again. Solid performers know this, and will find a way to balance all activities in order to keep their pipeline full.
Terminate
Then you’ve got your underachiever. Their sales related activities are consistently well below appropriate levels. Assuming they have the skill set necessary to succeed in sales, determine quickly whether or not they have the desire and work ethic required to achieve consistent selling success.
Being lucky doesn’t last forever. In fact, generally speaking, the harder you work, the luckier you get. It’s the sales manager’s responsibility to ensure the entire sales team achieves their activity goals in order to ensure selling success. If you’ve got a salesperson on your team who either doesn’t possess the skills necessary to succeed in sales, or they don’t have the work ethic, it’s time to part ways.
