7 Reasons Why Your Sales Team Is Not A Sales Force

One of the top gripes companies have on a consistent basis is that their sales team is not selling. To fix that, you need to ask a clarifying question, "Do we have a Sales Team or a Sales Force?" Sales Teams wait around for the sales to happen. Sales Forces generate sales. There is a fundamental difference between these two sales ideologies, and it will affect the overall predictability of your business revenue.

Think about it for a moment. If you are waiting around for a client to call and give you a sale, it is impossible to predict when and how much. Sure companies look at last year's numbers and use that as a gauge of what should be coming in or what is commonly referred to as run-rate, but what if it doesn't? We see this time and again and when those numbers don't come in, there is an awful lot of pain that goes around. You need a force of sales professionals that smash the market with productive revenue generating activity. If you are salivating and wondering how to make this happen, you first need to understand why your Sales Team is not a Sales Force. Through a wealth of experience, we've found that these are the top 7 reasons why the Force isn't with you:

Culture: This is the one that's most important and almost always gets ignored. A culture of accountability, hard work, and results will transform an organization. If everyone is getting in at 9:00, spending the first 45 minutes checking email, sharpening pencils, taking 30 minute coffee breaks, taking 2 hour lunches, spending their afternoon checking Facebook and email and leaving at 4:00, there isn't a lot of time for selling. This is a common occurrence in organizations and instead, creating a culture of selling from the receptionist all the way through sales, operations, finance, HR, up to the CEO is more powerful than anything else you can do. Create a selling culture and the culture will sell!

Set Clear Achievable Targets and Don't Touch Them: If you don't know where the target is, you can't hit it. Targets and commission dictate behavior so if you're wondering why your sales people aren't selling, you might first ask is if you're motivating the right behavior. Clear and concise targets that are motivated by properly structured commissions are going to create results. The targets can be challenging, however, they need to be achievable on planet Earth. For a sales person, there is nothing worse than getting an unrealistic target. It will make them stop before they start. What's worse than that is moving a target after it has set. Amateur organizations set the targets and then penalize the sales force for hitting the goals by moving them higher in-year. This will de-motivate the entire team and you'll watch sales go down the drain. A total culture killer!

Structure: There are so many ways to structure a Sales Force and when you get it right, it's magic. If you get the right people in the right job, they will shine. Don't have your hunters wasting their time farming and don't make a farmer hunt that doesn't have the DNA to hunt. This is just scratching the surface, but getting the right people in the right place is a day-one priority. Also, once you get this structure set, it is OK to tweak but don't change it too often. We experienced a major multi-billion dollar company that decided to restructure the sales force, not one time, not two times, not three times, but four times within an 18 month period. Do you think anyone was concentrating on selling? Set the structure and run with it! Tweak but don't touch.

Rewards: From a used car lot to Fortune 500 companies, there are always going to be companies that destroy their sales force's motivation by having an ambiguous commission plan or constantly tweaking the plan to the salesperson's disadvantage. These sales professionals are selling to make money. Full Stop. When you play with that, you play with your results. Make the commission schedule clear and concise. Remember, this is going to dictate the salespeople's behavior so if you want your sales to go ballistic, motivate them with good commissions based on a plan that is fair, challenging, and easy to understand that tell them how they are going to get paid.

People and Training: Sometimes, you can't turn coal into a diamond no matter how much pressure and heat you apply. It's not that someone has to be born to sell, but if they don't have the inherent skill set and don't want to work hard, they are not going to perform. Selling isn't easy and that's why good commission structures reward the sales professional handsomely for selling. It usually takes a tremendous amount of hard work and the willingness to learn new skills, but it also takes training. If your salespeople don't have enough training to understand how to prospect, propose,and close through a disciplined sales cycle than they are going to either fail or half succeed. If you find your sales are lagging, and you have addressed the other steps in this list, then training is your priority!

Results & Forecasting: This is one of the all time favorites because it is just so easy to fix. Companies that don't track their opportunities on a platform that is easy for Sales to know they are not hitting their targets are asking for failure. This is no different than using a map. If you don't know where you are, where you need to go, how far you have come, and how to get there, how can you ever reach your destination? Sales isn't any different. Get proper tools in place and at this point, there are so many inexpensive options available to do this like, Salesforce.com, Zoho and Insightly that you have no excuse. Get it done!

Administrative Nightmare's: This one is easy to see but the hardest to fix. If your salespeople are spending all of their time doing paperwork either before or after a sales, there isn't much time for selling. We witnessed this in organizations both in the US and Canada and in some organizations it was so bad that the entire sales force was frightened of making a sale due to the overwhelming amount of work that would follow. Sales people are there to sell. Take away the administrative burden and get them selling! Remember, selling is a profession and good salespeople are professionals. You wouldn't ask a doctor to fix your toilet so don't ask salespeople to do anything else but sell.

These are the 7 Steps that will surely help turn your sales team into a sales force. Take a look at your organization and see if you have addressed all the steps. If you have and you still aren't getting anywhere, there will be several articles coming out in the next few weeks that discuss each one of these steps to help you more. If after that your team is still not a force, feel free to give us a call and our team will see if we can help.

This article was written by Dominic Mazzone, Managing Partner of Smashbox Consulting.

Perks Of Using Specifically Designed Pharma CRM Software

Certainly, there is an unfathomable competition among the giants and middies of pharmaceutical industry. In the technically advanced and eased business conditions, pharma companies are spreading their business areas. Resultantly, the expansion of business requires more attention from the company's management. Things need to be carefully tracked in order to maintain the record of the performance of the company and the individuals, like representatives and managers, associated with the company. Nonetheless, maintaining and securing the records of hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics, where the drugs and services of the company are supplied is also a great challenge for the management body of a pharma company.

Pharma CRM Software

Specifically designed CRM software applications for pharmaceutical companies are profoundly supportive tools for edetailing in pharma sector; these tools let an organization manage its sales records, and enhance the relationships with its clients, like physicians, chemists, and hospitals. Here is how these applications help a pharmaceutical company -

Employee Management - Marketing is the backbone of the drug manufacturing industry. In a single facility, there could be hundreds of sales and marketing professionals. Assigning them the daily task and adjudging their performance may seem like an uphill task for the company management. The CRMs that have been distinctively designed for pharma companies have unique features, which allow the seniors to allot the work and goals to the sale teams and individuals.

Boosting Up the Productivity of Employees - The application enables the company to categorize its employees, based on their performance. By classifying your workers, you can easily spot those who are performing well (they should given bonus); and those who are not performing well (they should undergo an internal training). In both conditions, whether you are giving bonus or providing training, you know, the productivity of your employees is going to get better.

Relationship Management - The abbreviation CRM stands for Customer/Client Relationship Management. The pharma CRM software enables a company to easily organize the details of its clients. It also aids them to enhance the client relations by sorting client types and scheduling client visits, greeting calls, and gifts.

Increase Sales - You can allocate access of the software to your medical representatives. It will help them explain and spread awareness about your products among your clients, which are doctors, chemists, and hospitals. Some CRMs come with in-built feature that endow you to interpret research data, and plan your marketing strategies, based on the collected facts. Further, these applications also facilitate you in calculating the outcomes of your marketing strategies.

Some pharma CRM software tools could make it possible for you to track the performance of your competitors' products.

Author has many years of experience in content writing. He is the most celebrated and acclaimed author in financial sector. His many articles have appeared online and he is cited for his work. Now he is providing information on pharma CRM software and e-detailing in Pharma

Strategic Selling: The Cockroaches Never Hire Exterminators

Often when you are working with a large group or organization there are many competing agendas as well as internal politics that, as an outsider, you are either not privy to or not savvy enough to fully comprehend. As a thought leader we tend to be somewhat idealistic. Here's my stuff, here's a group that I know I can help. In a perfect world we go off into the sunset together and make the world a better place. It's pretty straight forward. Rarely do we live in such an idealized version of corporate life. It's a simple observation, but one I feel we constantly overlook, especially when it comes to strategic selling: the client's need is only a small factor in the process.

I've recently integrated a question into our enterprise sales process that has helped us better read the existing politics and more importantly win the business. I take a step back and ask who should have been solving this organization's problem in the first place? Sometimes that's an easy question to answer. A marketing problem belongs to marketing; a supply chain problem belongs to the supply chain group. However, many problems are not as obvious when it comes to determining who should have owned it and solved it.

A cockroach clearly knows that there is an infestation, but, the cockroach never calls the exterminator.

After I identify the cockroach in the process I make it a point to figure out how to make that individual an ally. Why do they feel threatened by the enterprise solution we are discussing? Why would they feel that they are to blame or are at risk if we are to move forward? If that doesn't work it's time to figure out who else in the group would hire the exterminator. This is often a senior leader that may not even be aware their team member feels threatened, feels responsible for the problem, and this actually blocks progress.

Once you've identified the issue and had the conversation it's amazing how quickly the tides will turn. Often the leader needs to reassure the cockroach that they have full confidence in him or her and in their abilities. That it's OK to go outside for assistance and that they are entertaining a solution because no one in the organization presents the same expertise and experience that you do as an outsider. In fact, the leader typically would prefer that because as an outsider you are free to speak the truth relative to your observations and what is needed to rectify the current situation.

Always be able to identify the cockroach early in the enterprise sales process. You're an exterminator; if you're selling to the cockroach you are wasting your time and energy.

I enable thought leaders, authors and gurus to monetize their content through books, keynote speaking, the creation of training services and products, and consulting and assessment tools. I start at the strategic stage, define the target market, assist in the creation of the offerings and solutions, and lead business development, sales and marketing of those solutions.

Irrelevant Leads Vs Canvassing for Prospects - Make or Break or Blame?

And so it begins... you pick up that phone, you dial a number and YES, you get an answer... at the other end of the line an angry, tired from a difficult morning at work individual, who registered on your website because he saw a promotional banner that he doesn't remember, doesn't know what it is that you do and has no interest whatsoever in spending any European, American or Japanese currency on your offering.

On the other hand, online and offline campaigns, a massive pool of media buying options, countless possibilities for lead generation... With online marketing going nuke and the cost of acquiring one lead hovering above your rise or fall, I ask "is canvassing for prospects still an option?"

The general trend is that you still have the option to canvas for prospects. But then the dreaded report comes only to show that a massive percentage of your leads are indeed irrelevant. I named these leads irrelevant, since the term is synonymous with not here nor there, non material and unrelated. Since they have no idea what they've done, why they approached you, don't know who you are, what you do or what you are offering, the term seemed appropriate.

While some people would argue that time well spent is time that makes money which reflects time spent where interested prospects rule, I will tend to disagree. With those irrelevant leads, Sales Reps differentiate themselves from the swarm.

Between these irrelevant leads and the goal of you making a paying customer out of them, lies a far thinner line than most Sales Reps think. This line includes:

- Making yourself relevant to them before they become relevant to you. 

- Spending the same amount of energy as you would on a prospect. 

- Ask questions and understand the lead's surroundings, work, interests to find a connection. 

- Provide information and educate. 

- Send material, links, videos, reading material to gain interest for further follow ups.

and what do you know... ? That report is not so dreaded anymore, is it?

We are living in the era of blaming each other and the same as in every civilized realization, we need to find someone to blame right? So if we've come to agree that canvassing for prospects is bad, who's to blame for "it" happening? Definitely not the irrelevant leads that found a way to crawl into your report and surely not the Sales Rep that has not been educated about what sales are NOT about.

Sales are not just about knowledge and skills. Through time they evolved into a new-fangled monster called Attitude. So ask yourself and determine whether your attitude is to over think and canvass rather than closing one more sale.

To conclude, if you are a Director who promoted a Sales Manager just to fill a role, or a Sales Manager who accepted this role with not enough know how to carry out the task, or a Sales Rep that despite the aforementioned still canvasses to make a sale...

Can you now say "Guilty as charged"?

Originally published on http://www.allfx-consult.com.

With almost a decade of Forex experience, allFX Consult focuses on the challenges that are present in all sales/operations departments of established and start-up FX firms.

Our product suite ranges from structuring and/or restructuring complete sales departments, career development and placement of candidates looking to progress in the Forex industry, institutional business introducer's with dozens of deals in our portfolio.

Culture: The Sales Driver Or Sales Killer

Have you ever walked into a business, looked around at the drained energy in the office and wanted to ask, "Who died?" You just walked into a culture catastrophe. Culture is one of those elusive factors of business success that most organizations can't seem to get their hands and minds around. Sales culture is even more elusive and to create it, you need everyone indoctrinated from the janitor to the CEO.

So what is sales culture? Let's look at two different stories to answer this question.

Not a Sales Culture:

Jack is the V.P. of sales and works for Culture Catastrophe. Every morning he gets in around 9:17 while he tells his team to be in at 8:00. Jack locks himself in his office and only comes out for his numerous trips to the coffee shop and then his subsequent numerous trips to the bathroom. Jack's sales people are constantly dealing with the operations group to get their orders done and operations really doesn't care about getting them done. Sally in operations constantly tells her co-workers that she is only required to process X number of orders per day and pressures them not do more because the company is going to expect more from everybody. Sally is constantly missing deadlines and frustrating sales and customers. When Jack's team tells him, Jack says there is nothing he can do because the Operations V.P. is constantly defending her team. By 4:00 jack has had it and he packs up and goes home. Consequently, so does his sales team and everyone wonders why sales are stagnant.

True Sales Culture:

Mike is the V.P. of sales and an integral part of Culture Nirvana. Every morning he gets in at 7:30 and tells his sales force to be in at 8:00. Funny enough, the entire sales force shows up at 7:30. By 8:00 they already went through their email and are ready to start selling. About three times a week, there isn't a sales person in the office by 9:30 because they are all out on customer appointments. The operations team processes orders on time and understand they are an integral part of the sales process. In addition, they consistently bring sales opportunities to the sales force that they uncover while working with the customers through the order process. The sales force loves Mike as he assists them to close sales and helps clear hurdles. Mike usually doesn't leave until about 6:00 but creates a culture of accountability and respect where everyone is free to come and go as they need to, as long as they are hitting their numbers. The revenues of Culture Nirvana consistently climb year over year.

These may seem like to fairyland tales but they are being played out in tens of thousands of businesses each and every day. An integrated sales culture is what separates success from failure and in many cases, growing businesses from what we call, a "thready pulse." In medical terms this means a pulse that is very fine and scarcely perceptible; or in other words, you could die at any time.

So create a sales culture in your organization where everyone has their eye on the importance of selling and generating new sales. Make sure that you have:

Spent the time to train every single employee on what it is the company does/offers.

Continue to put the entire organization's eye on the prize when it comes to revenue targets.

Make the entire organization accountable for a sale

Create a healthy atmosphere of "It's us against the world, and we are going to win together."

Some of these may sound glib, but they aren't. They are powerful drivers and once you start, you will watch the sales culture take on a life of it's own. However, be aware that culture is set from the top(CEO/Leader) and flows through the entire organization. If you are a leader of a business, you need to inject a ton of enthusiasm into the culture to get your employees engaged. So, get up, get rolling and get your sales culture kicked in and watch it fly.

This article was written by Dominic Mazzone, Managing Partner of Smashbox Consulting.

Improving Customer Attrition Requires As Much Heart As Smart

Headline: Three years of misses on both the top and bottom lines, customer churn exceeding $56 million annually and continuous market share losses result in the break up and sale of another industry leader. Approximately 1,500 employees received their pink slips as the Company closed it doors today!

If a firm's revenue growth is unimpressive I recommend that leaders first look to how they manage current customers for clues to the solution. More often than not customer attrition is the canary in the mine, a harbinger of poor sales growth. Not surprisingly many leaders opt for the sex appeal of new sales to solve their growth problem. They often conceptualize that a focus on customer attrition is too defensive, too demoralizing for their "hunters". In this exciting technology led world we live in let me remind you that an idea always precedes action. Your idea or philosophy about where the customer fits in your business determines everything about you as a company and ultimately what strategies you decide to implement.

In no particular order of offense let me describe how customer attrition philosophy is often actualized in real life. When faced with customer attrition challenges one group of managers will take a deep dive into spreadsheet management. All in the name of accountability they start tracking everything imaginable. They will assign task forces for task forces and even measure the number of project teams working on the problem. Sometimes they schedule conference calls before they know why. Very often marketing functionaries are wrongly obsessed with measuring outbound emails, outbound phone calls, scheduled presentations, and face-to-face sales meetings. This group clamors incessantly about how effective managers track activity and measure everything. I so want this group to re-read Deming's book, "Out of the Crisis" to get a sense of what the father of quality had to say about this phenomenon.

A second group of managers is marginally more thoughtful and tends to use lean process, six-sigma, and continuous improvement initiatives to kick start customer attrition improvement believing that process drives everything. Their teams minimize the kinds of data previously mentioned in favor of critical service incidents, order form errors, call center wait times, and a host of other process variances. Unfortunately this faction often draws conclusions from an exclusively internal perspective. This unit's findings mistakenly become the customer's in a very "we know best" kind of way. Although this cluster usually extolls the virtue of the customer's voice very rarely do we hear that voice in the final analysis. This crowd still finds its growth strategies de-railed because their perspective about customers is too fragmented. These managers tend to see customer attrition issues as quantitative exercises and often miss the human side of the customer's decisions.