You’ve probably heard the expression before… if people don’t get things done it’s either because they don’t know what to do or they don’t know how to do it. Good sales managers know that setting a goal (what to do) for the team is important to drive success. But the best sales leaders know there is more to it than just pointing the team in the right direction. The best sales leaders focus on three areas with their teams to make success more likely. The formula for Success = Knowledge + Skills + Process.

Knowledge

Using the analogy of football, if a coach wants the football team to be successful, the team needs to know the rules of the game. Without the proper knowledge of the game of football, they have no chance. For your team, make sure they know what they need to know to be successful. At a minimum, if you’re leading a sales team, they each need to know their quotas, territories, and product / service offerings.

• What are you doing to educate your sales team on the products, the services, the competition, and your own company?
• How do you encourage your sales team to learn more about the industry?
• In your weekly calls, how do you solicit their input on their territory, customers, and opportunities?

Skills

Back to football… and this one seems as bit obvious. The players who excel have advanced skill sets. Skills are different from knowledge and understanding. Just knowing the rules of football won’t make you successful. You need to be able to execute the skills on the field. Talent can be defined as a blessing from God that someone is born with, but skills are something that can be taught and developed. Everyone on your sales team comes to you with a certain skill set, but each of them can develop their skills further. Even professional athletes work on their skills weekly to fine tune them. Corporations have entire departments devoted to this called Talent Development.

Dan Pink, author of Drive, shares research that shows individuals are motivated by opportunities to develop their skills. He calls it mastery. When we love what we do, we all want opportunities to improve our skills and get better at it. If you develop your sales team, they will not only perform better but they will be motivated by the opportunity to become the best that they can be.

• What are you doing to develop your sales team’s skills?
• Are you developing them with one-on-one coaching conversations?
• Do you train your sales team on communication skills and sales strategy?

Process

Process selling has been around since 1988 when Neil Rackham published SPIN Selling. Since that time numerous sales process books have been written. The premise behind every sales process is the same. If we can identify the proper steps for taking a sale from beginning to end, we can create a repeatable process. While there is merit to the logic, if you’ve been in sales long enough you realize not everything is going to fit into a nice, neat box.

Many service organizations have adopted the methodologies of Lean 6 Sigma to identify and improve processes. Entrepreneurs know that to increase sales and scale for growth requires implementation of streamlined workflows across the organization. This includes the sales process too.  Providing a roadmap to your sales team helps them in several ways:

• The stages of the sale are identified from beginning to end
• Next steps for the sales rep and sales leadership becomes easier by identifying the current stage
• Forecasting improves because identified stages are more or less likely to reach closure
• Internal communication gets easier because everyone speaks the same sales language

It’s going to take some effort

Improving Knowledge, Skills and Process will require your sales team (and maybe you too!) to develop some new habits. That in itself can be a daunting task. But if you can provide these three elements for your sales team, you are setting them up for success.

But what about motivation?

The one argument I’ve heard from students when I present this formula for success is that none of this will equal success because there is one element missing… motivation. In other words, if they don’t want to do it, then nothing will change. I agree completely. But I also think that’s like saying, “Nothing is going to change until something changes.”  It’s a given.

Best advice I can give on helping them find their motivation is to help them find their “why?”  In other words, what is their purpose for working? In sales its easy to answer this question with “Money!” but I disagree.  It might be what money provides or makes possible, but it’s not for the money itself… but that’s a blog post for another time.

What part of this formula do you think is most helpful and why?

Leave your comments and feedback below.

Still working on all three pieces myself!
See you next week,
Russ

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