Attract the Right Job or Clientele: Essential Steps To Change Sales’ Behaviour and Improve Performance
Author Bio:
Monika Götzmann is the EMEA Marketing Director for MHI Global (formerly AchieveGlobal), a global sales training and customer experience company. It specialises in providing exceptional sales executive training courses and helps organisations develop business strategies to achieve sales success. Monika enjoys sharing her insight and thoughts to provide better sales and leadership development training.
Essential Steps To Change Sales Behaviour and Improve Performance
All successful sales leaders must place a significant focus on coaching sales team members, helping them to reach their full potential. Whether through formal sales training or other less formal methods, the ultimate aim should be to positively influence behaviours, in order to achieve the desired results.
In this article, we take a more detailed look at the different steps that businesses and their sales managers need to take, in order to successfully shape sales behaviours and improve performance.
1. Make Sure Sales Leaders Are Trained
A very simple first step is to make sure your sales managers are appropriately trained, so they have the required skills to coach your sales team. In many cases, sales leaders are promoted from field sales positions, due to excellent performance, yet do not then receive the necessary leadership training to succeed as a coach.
“Sales managers often [need to be] taught how to coach…while also learning the new skills they need to succeed as a business manager,” says Joe Galvin from the Miller Heiman Research Institute. “Special training modules need to be created to teach the sales manager how to coach salespeople in the use of the sales concepts.”
2. Pay Attention to Individual Staff Behaviours
Without knowing what your sales staff are actually doing, it is almost impossible to effectively coach them to do a better job. Therefore, you must make it a priority for sales leaders to listen to sales calls, observe sales staff in the field and document anything that needs improvement, as well as things they do well.
These observations will then form the basis for any individual coaching strategies your sales leaders formulate. One of the single biggest mistakes companies make is to lose track of what their sales members are actually doing. Being aware of specific habits allows your sales managers to point out undesirable behaviours and start to correct them.
3. Work With Staff and Agree on Targets
Different staff members need to change different behaviours in order to fulfill their potential, so it is important that coaching plans are tailored to suit individuals. The best way to do this is to carry out staff appraisals, focus on specific strengths and weaknesses and agree on some realistic, achievable targets to work towards.
“Spell out what the two of you agree on as success,” says Barrett Riddleberger, the founder and CEO of xPotential Selling, writing for Inc.com. “Since all sales reps are not the same, customizing a development plan is essential. Take plenty of time to develop each plan for each sales rep.”
4. Use the Right Metrics to Track Progress
Once you have leaders who are able to coach staff, and targets to work towards, it is important to provide the relevant coaching and monitor progress. After all, you need to know whether or not you have succeeded in changing behaviours and you also need to check whether those behaviour changes have improved overall sales performance.
Evaluating your sales coaching means choosing the right metrics to monitor, and the metrics you decide upon will depend entirely on the behaviours you want to influence and the results you want to see. Part of this process is also recognising when progress isn’t being made and stepping in to make alterations.
5. Provide Your Sales Staff With Role Models
Finally, sales leaders within the organisation need to recognise the responsibility they have to serve as role models to sales reps. Indeed, one of the single best ways to change the behaviour of sales staff is to make sure they see a better way, so it is important for sales managers to set a good example at all times.
Although acting as a role model should be a continuous thing, many businesses find it helpful to have new staff members shadowing an experienced sales team member or sales leader before actually selling anything themselves. This allows them to see how it should be done and reinforces information they get from traditional training.
The upcoming MHI Global Sales and Service Training Summit in October in Munich, Germany will look to tackle some of these ideas in greater detail, so if you wish to take sales training to the next level, feel free to register.
Sales Tips:
- Provide training for sales representatives
- Provide training for management
- Encourage teamwork
- Encourage dialogue between departments such as marketing and sales
- Host team meetings to discuss difficulties and how to surpass
- At team meetings highlight those that have found success and have them share how it was done
- Highlight sales team members who achieve quota at monthly meetings
- Host semi-annual team days with training and events
- At year-end provide recognition and awards at dinner for those who over-achieved quota
- Thank everyone in your employ
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As the CEO of Smooth Sale, after her near-death experience, Stutz adapted the motto, “Believe, Become, Empower.”Nice Girls DO Get the Sale is an International Best-Selling and is Evergreen – among the classics; HIRED! Helped many to secure the job they desired.
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