Sales Manager

Sales Contest That Keep The Whole Team Motivated

In a world where revenue is king, it’s natural to design your sales incentives programs to reward those with the highest sales. While this method make sense, it’s flawed. It keeps top performers motivated but doesn’t engage the rest of the team who can’t see themselves in that top spot.

Sales contests are a great way to motivate the whole team. Beyond rewarding sales and revenue, they offer the ability to reward many different types of increased action that align with your organization’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Rewarding different types of KPIs will increase rep confidence in their ability to compete and will allow them to reassess their potential impact on the outcome of the game.

This positive setting will lead to greater results in the contest and healthier competition that boosts the morale of the whole team and not just the usual top reps and reminds the team that there are many ways to make an impact. This is important because while sales reps are typically tracked and rewarded for their individual sales, the main goal of the sales team is to improve the sales for the entire organization.

Benefits of Sales Contests

By nature, humans are very competitive beings. It has come from millennia of competing for resources and status. For those two reasons we compete with each other on almost every level and in almost every way possible whether it has to do with school, sports, work, or even the greenness of your lawn. Competition gives people a sense of pride and purpose.

With that in mind, sales managers and leadership can capitalize on human tendency through sales competitions. The main goals of sales competitions should be to increase individual performance, elevate team activity, and boost overall morale.

Tips for Planning Sales Contests

The best way to get everyone excited about a new sales contest is to ensure that no individual has an upper hand from the start. In order for a sales competition to guarantee a level the playing field between top and bottom performing reps, implement rules or mechanisms of:

1. Chance

2. Measurement of activity

With mechanisms of chance, the winners of the sales games are less likely to always be dominated by top reps because their normal strategies of making sales become irrelevant. Along those same lines, the outcomes based on measurable amounts of activity also inhibits the top sellers from dominating the games if they are unwilling to put in the effort that the bottom reps are able and willing to do.

The reason for applying these two characteristics to the sales games is that it makes every rep equal from the start and encourages healthy competition. Let’s face it, nobody is thrilled to compete in or win a game when the outcome is practically predetermined.

25 Sales Contest Ideas to Motivate Your Team

Below you will find a list of 25 sales contest ideas managers can use to motivate reps and increase performance. You’ll see the goal for each one, as well as how they work.

1 | Daily Prize

It may seem that holding a daily contest makes the competition trivial because many of the prizes are small and not of great value. The key to this strategy is that it keeps the reps constantly engaged.

Since the prizes are given daily, the lead or sales tracker is reset each day so that there will be a wider range of possible winners.

Raffle tickets

2 | Raffle

A raffle is a good way to incentivize reps to achieve short-term goals while being able to win a larger and more lucrative prize. Raffle tickets are given to reps when they reach specific sales goals and the prize is generally only drawn after a long-term sales period has passed.

The secret to holding a good raffle is ensuring that every participant has a measurable and achievable goal that can earn them a chance to get a raffle ticket and enter the drawing.

3 | Customer Reviews

A customer review contest requires a little bit of front-end work from the standpoint that there needs to be an easy way for the reps to obtain a review whether it is good or bad. The easiest way to go about this is to set up a customer survey or take advantage of an already existing survey process.

A customer review contest requires a little bit of front-end work from the standpoint that there needs to be an easy way for the reps to obtain a review whether it is good or bad. The easiest way to go about this is to set up a customer survey or take advantage of an already existing survey process.

Besides receiving the always nice pat-on-the-back from a satisfied customer and the public recognition from upper management, this contest encourages reps to not just be good at selling a product but also be ready to get a review of their service for better or for worse.

4 | Salesperson of the Month

This one is a classic and is often ran as one. The winner is generally the sales rep with the most revenue in sales. But just because this contest carries the classic title doesn’t mean the item being measured has to be classic as well.

Get creative and aim for something unique such as the most individual sales, the most “Nos”, the most reviews good or bad, or the most helpful with coaching other sales reps. Either way you measure it and reward it, the winning sales rep will always enjoy having everyone else see their name and photo on the office wall for an entire month.

5 | Winner’s Choice

A winner’s choice is where the winner gets to decide what the prize will be for either themselves or the next month’s winner, with obvious monetary limits or choices set by management beforehand. It’s a simple way to not have to get too creative and the benefit is you’re less likely to have someone complain about the prize.

6 | I OWE U! (from the boss)

An I OWE U from a superior is always a fun sales contest and cause for excitement on the sales team. It’s best to set a structured timeline and goal well in advance. Since it will most likely be you or someone near you fulfilling the debt, it is best to make clear the prize or selection of prizes.

If you want to get a solid gauge as to what type of debt your sales reps are looking for, then have them submit their requests ahead of the contest and you can select one of the prizes as long as they are not too outrageous.

Common prizes for the winner may include eating/cooking lunch together, giving professional coaching sessions, washing and cleaning their car, or even more humorous things such as performing karaoke to their favorite song in front of the whole team.

7 | On a Boat (Boss for the day)

It is a pretty simple prize for whatever the contest may be. The winner gets to be boss for a day or some variation of it. You could let them take your position for the day, sit at your desk, pick the location for the next company lunch, or run a meeting. Either way the winner will be happy to hear all day long those two sweet words come out of your mouth, “Yes Boss!”.

8 | Sales Poker

This is another fun sales contest that requires each participant to acquire 5 cards out of a 52-card deck. Each card is earned by achieving an established goal. At the end of the sales period, the sales rep with the best hand wins the prize. It is an easy game that allows all participating sales reps a chance to win, even if they weren’t necessarily the best performing sales rep for that period.

9 | Lead Conversion

The premise of this sales competition is that leads are handed out randomly and evenly to the sales reps and the one person or group to convert the most leads into sales during a specific timeframe wins the prize. This sales game allows for a winner by chance since some reps might get more quality leads than others.

10 | The Whopper (or Top This)

What’s a whopper without its lettuce and tomato? The trick to winning this contest is to be the one to upsell the customer the most. The length of the sales period can vary and the prize along with it.

11 | Most Wanted

This is similar to the “Whopper” contest but differs in what types of leads are handed out. In this sales competition the manager identifies and hands out leads of the biggest leaders in the industry. No small fish here nor any random ones either. These leads are highly desirable targets and the sales rep or team that lands the biggest single sale wins.

12 | Upsell Contest

This sales game is designed to reward sales reps for upselling and increasing revenue from existing partners. Some options for measuring the upsell progress and determining a winner is to select either the largest upsell dollar amount earned, the largest upsell percentage earned relative to the client’s prior account history, or the highest amount of client’s that are upsold.

13 | Sales Bingo

Bingo is always a good time. Turn it into a sales contest by making the squares represent different sales goals. What makes this sales game fun is that it requires skill and luck. The skill to make the goal on each square and the luck to get them in the correct sequence.

14 | Most No’s (in a single week)

The Most No’s game is a fun and creative sales contest idea used to stir the sales team pot. The reason is because it seems so counterintuitive to be wanting more rejection. In reality, it drives an increase in sales activity and the likelihood of a rep getting a “Yes”.

The goal of the game is to see who can get the most No’s/rejections within a sales period whether it is a day, a week, or a month. Generally, the game shouldn’t last longer than a week since the longer the game continues, the less competitive it becomes. The gap between the lowest and the highest “No’s” counts gets wider.

15 | The Loser

It never pays to be the loser but sometimes the loser does pay. Simply put, the loser of the sales contest pays an amount towards a company party or something fun that in the end everyone will get to enjoy.

Be sure to make the amount somewhat insignificant, like $20, so that the loser won’t be too upset when they have to pay up. Some good ideas for where the money go are holiday parties, company picnics, team lunches, happy hour events, or even have a charity chosen by the team.

16 | Retention-Based Sales Contest

In most industries, the companies that are the most profitable aren’t usually making one-time sales but are instead focused on creating repeat sales with the same clients. Sales reps will often get focused on landing new clients instead of catering to the known clients that have already given them their business.

To create a more loyal client base, it’s recommended to have some sales contest ideas fixated on encouraging sales reps to garner loyal and repeat business. One way to do this is to hang up in the office a repeat business whiteboard. The goal of displaying their individual progress is to help them visualize their individual contribution to the company’s loyal client base.

17 | Enterprise-Level Sales Contests

Keep your team motivated and take away the focus on individual sales. Create a fun sales contest where offices compete against other offices or managers against managers. This is all about boosting team morale, creating a greater team cohesion and losing the emphasis on the individual.

A satisfying reward for the winning team or manager is often just bragging rights.

18 | Time-Reward Sales Contests

A high motivator and fun sales contest idea that gets the competitive juices flowing is a reward of time off. It suggested to use this reward near the end of a sales cycle because sales reps will sometimes hold off on making certain deals so when the next sales period starts, they have a deal ready to go in their pocket.

The rewards can range from leaving early on a Friday, arriving late on a low volume day, or even a paid time off (PTO) day.

19 | Buddy Up

Use the buddy system. Pair your top sales reps with the lower performers and reward the top sales team at the end of the month. The main result of this exercise will be greater team collaboration and the lower performers will have a chance to learn what makes their highly productive counterpart so effective.

20 | Pitch Contest

In this contest, top producers anonymously submit their sales pitch and the team tries to guess who’s each one is. At the end of all the submissions the whole team can vote on whose pitch they liked the most. All participants get to keep a copy of the pitches which they can learn from and use moving forward.

21 | Sales Team Scavenger Hunt

Frequently, a sales team has members that have become specialists in selling specific products or targeting certain clients. The scavenger hunt sales contest encourages your sales reps to team up and utilize their special talents to accomplish an objective.

The objectives can range from reaching a set revenue goal to selling a specific product to accomplishing a certain number of upsells. As the team members work together to fulfill their scavenger hunt objectives, they will naturally increase collaboration, boost morale, and drive sales.

22 | Surprise Salesperson Appreciation

Don’t let a team member go unnoticed even if they aren’t at the top of the charts. Choose a day when the entire team brings in a little gift or letter showing their appreciation for a chosen team member. Sales reps are notorious for being hyper-competitive and will often lose sight of keeping the overall morale high. Show every team member they are important to the success of the business and each other.

23 | Brackets

Much like college basketball’s March Madness, this sales game breaks the team into brackets. Each team member competes against a fellow sales rep and the one that out-sales the other during that week advances in the ranks.

As the weeks go on the competition gets more intense as the winning reps advance. At the end, the winning team member (and potentially the runner-up) gets a prize.

24 | Fantasy Sales Teams

Fantasy football teams have infiltrated the office water cooler, so why not take some of that competitive talk and let it infiltrate the sales team? Break your sales team up and simulate a random draft pick. Points are then awarded to each team’s “player”’ for their sales. The manager or team that earns the most fantasy points in the end wins the competition.

25 | Traveling Trophy (Floating Prize)

Each sales period the sales rep with the highest sales gets awarded a trophy to display on their desk. As long as they stay on top of their game, the trophy stays in their hands. When they are knocked off their highest sales pedestal, the winning rep takes the trophy and displays it at their desk.

As silly as it may seem, the flaunting of a decently sized gleaming trophy at a fellow team member’s desk can spark the competitive edge a manager is looking for in their team. Add a little more emphasis to the sales games and post pictures of each week’s winners in the breakroom.

Common sales contest mistakes to avoid when setting up your contest:

While running sales contests can definitely boost morale, they do come with a risk. Be sure to avoid these common mistakes which can cause the opposite of the intended effect.

1 | Your contest only motivates top salespeople and fails to reach your team as a whole.
2 | It fails to hold your employees’ interest after the first few days.
3 | Improvements in performance do not last once the contest is over.
4 | It creates a competitive environment that hurts collaboration and employee spirit.
5 | Scores are tedious and time-consuming to track.

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales automation and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

The Complete Guide to Sales Territory Mapping

There’s a lot of strategy and leg-work that goes into proper sales territory mapping. This is a crucial part in setting your team up for success.

It can be a tedious process, but it’s necessary to ensure your team is canvassing the right area and not just going in blindly.

What is a Sales Territory Map?

A sales territory map is a plan of attack for your sales reps. Mapping gives you the ability to designate areas and assign specific territories to each rep. With Territory mapping software, cut territories that meet your criteria and allocate across your sales team. Not only does mapping out territories mean you only targeting prospects that are viable contenders to make a purchase, it keeps reps from overlapping and poaching each other’s sales.

Benefits of a Clearly Defined Sales Territory Map

Cut territories. Map out territories and assign to  reps.
Territory hierarchy. Create hierarchies so everyone on the team knows exactly where to go.
Real-time visibility. Managers and reps can work together to ensure every territory is fully covered.
Stay organized. Easily edit, manage and delete territories as reps move around.

The Old School Approach to Sales Territory Mapping

One of the reasons this process has been such a pain for so long is because of how it’s been done.

Using the “highlighter and Google Maps” method leaves a ton of room for error and confusion. You have no way to determine how many homes you’re assigning to each rep, how many customers you have in each territory you assign, or the demographics for the homeowners you should be targeting.

Not to mention once you send the team out with their printed maps you rarely ever get them back therefore have no historical idea where you’ve worked or haven’t worked.

Using highlighters and maps leaves a lot of room for dispute between sales reps.

Consider this situation:

1. They’ll knock outside of the territory you assigned them claiming they weren’t sure where it ended.
2. Then, the rep who is assigned to that territory will get upset about the sale another rep made in their territory.

Who do you give the sale to; the rep who closed the deal or the rep whose territory that sale is assigned to?

Turning what should be a celebration into a dramatic debacle.

4 Ways to Map Sales Territories

To save time, be more efficient, eliminate confusion and increase performance, create and assign territories for your team using the following strategies:

1. Target Market Demographics
2. Current Customers in Each Territory
3. Evenly Distributed by Number of Homes
4. Evenly Distributed by City / Zip

1. Target Market Demographics

One of the most effective strategies for creating territories is to gather the demographics of your target market before sending your team out to knock doors.

This will eliminate the amount of time your reps spend in the field knocking aimlessly. You shouldn’t want your reps making attempts on homes you know either won’t close, or have a low possibility of closing.

Using a tool like SPOTIO’s Lead Machine will help you to identify key territories, target qualified customers that match your ideal customer profile (ICP), and ensure that your team is knocking doors that have real buying potential.

You’ll also have the ability to track the progress of each of these leads in your funnel through the app. This will prevent leads that you’ve spent money on from slipping through the cracks and increase the return on your investment.

Obviously you have to be able to identify your target market in order to purchase any type of leads. Some criteria are more important than others, like homeowners vs. renters, credit score, home market value and median home income.

The more information you have about your current customers, the better. It will allow you to understand where you’re having the most success and help you to identify higher quality potential customers with a greater chance of buying.

Another tool you can check out is a website called City Data.  Scroll down and choose your state and then you’ll have access to hundreds of segmentation options.

To learn how to best use this site download our free ebook below:

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2. Current Customers by Territory

Your current customers are extremely valuable to your business, and not just because they purchased your product or service.

Your customers can provide you with some of the highest converting and cheapest leads – referrals. You just have to ask.

Start by generating a list of all of your current customers. If you use a sales tracking app like SPOTIO, it’s simple to upload this list into your account, or you can simply sort the pins in your account by the status you created to signify a closed-won deal.

If you’re not using a sales tracking app, you’ll have to map these addresses by hand individually. It will be a much longer process, but well worth it.

Once you’re able to see all of your customers on a map, draw out territories for your reps to work based on these locations.

There’ are two strategies to this approach:

1. The first is to evenly distribute the number of customers in each territory for your sales reps.
2. The other option if your customers are more spread out is to assign a couple smaller territories to each rep, but still distribute them as evenly as possible.

The goal by doing this is to use your current customers as references when pitching a new prospect. You can also have your team visit satisfied customers to ask for referrals.

3. Evenly Distributed by Number of Homes

Making sure that sales reps have enough doors to knock is essential to their performance and production.

Without a sales territory mapping software, you can spend hours on this process. A sales territory mapping software significantly simplifies this process, saving you many hours and ensuring greater accuracy.

Create and assign territories based on the number of houses you want each rep to work at one time.

Start this process by determining the number of houses you want each rep on your team to have. As you start drawing out an area in SPOTIO, the app will tell you the estimated number of homes in that territory. You can always adjust it if there’s too many or note enough.

Using a territory mapping software will allow you to create even territories for your entire team in less than 10 minutes. If you choose 500 as the total number of homes you want to be in each territory, you just need to be close to that number. It’s not important for it to be exact; 475 or 525 is close enough.

If you want to guesstimate the number of houses in a sales territory consider that on ¼ acre lots which are common you will get 1,000 houses in a 1 mile by 1mile areas.

Territory Size Estimations for Sales Territory Mapping

4. Distributed by City or Zip Code

Creating territories by city or zip code is a little bit trickier because of the size of the area. Even if every city was the exact same size, the number of homes wouldn’t be.

There’s a variety of factors in play when creating territories by city or zip code. The demographics in each city can vary dramatically and will influence the number of potential customers for a rep to visit.

Distributing territories by city or zip code is one of the easiest methods because it’s black and white; there’s no grey area.

You tell a rep, “This is your city or zip code, and if you get a lead or sale outside of your territory, it’s going to the rep that territory belongs to.” Creating territories this way eliminates a lot of the conflict and guesswork for sales reps.

Because cities or zip codes vary in the number of houses, you may need to assign two or three to a rep.

These territories will have a ton of homes to work. They’re not going to be quick to work through and shouldn’t be changed frequently like smaller territories may be. Using a territory mapping software will help you to ensure you distribute the number of houses for each rep to work evenly by the city or zip code.

Bonus: Here’s a free Zip Code map you can use to slice and dice your marketplace by zip codes if you want to create your sales territories this way.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in the Territory Mapping Phase

Here is a short list of issues and errors managers can implement, which will improve their effectiveness in territory mapping:

Mistake #1:  Using limited data – and using the wrong territory management tool.

If you don’t know your client and, or account data, you can’t accurately know how well the sales rep is doing let alone make improvements. You also want to refrain from making continuous changes to sales territories, as it will negatively impact client engagement. However, you will want the ability to make modifications in the territories occasionally. Key here, find the ‘BEST’ CRM tool to aid you in this process.

Mistake #2: Leaving your sales team out of the picture.

In order to be effective in territory mapping, you NEED to involve your sales reps and teams. Taking into account the experience of your sales reps/teams will help to motivate them. This will encourage you to have the right reps in the right territories and make sure that the business is in their prospective territory. By doing so, you will ensure you have a plan in place that your sales reps/teams can embrace, and get behind.

Mistake # 3:  Getting overwhelmed with spreadsheets.

If you want to ‘win’ in sales performance and motivate your reps/teams, you MUST incorporate the right tools and applications to help you manage and evaluate your reps/teams. This will give your reps/teams the visibility into their targets, schedules, and the ability to align the right reps with the right accounts/products, which will minimize the sales assignment process and increase sales.

In defining a sales territory and determine if the territory mapping is efficient, you need to make sure of a few things:

Make sure the product that’s being sold in the territory is in demand, in the right market, and that there is the adequate transport facilities. You also need to know your competition! If sales are being made on a consistent basis and sales goals are being met, you’ve got the right territory mapping in place!

EXAMPLES of how to determine territory workload:

Workload (#) = [Current accounts (#) * Average time to service an active account (#)] + [Prospects (#) * Time spent trying to convert a prospect into an active account (#)]

The sales potential in a territory can be determined as follows:

Sales potential ($) = Number of possible accounts (#) x Buying power ($)

There is no ‘one size’ fits all when it comes to territory mapping. The most popular territories are done via geographical lines, and doing so will prevent companies from leveraging and optimizing revenue.

The round-robin method is best if going after a targeted market. Geographic distribution is best if you have boots on the ground. With the new advancements that technology is providing via account-based marketing, the best method is obviously going to be scattered among the states aiding in the new territory of adding a time-zone territory as well. So, as you can see, you really need to know your product, competition, market and sales reps to determine the best territory option for your organization.

Highest performing territories – sales by client, new contacts, opportunity-to-win rates, average deal size?

The best and highest performing territories are those that have been ‘optimized’ as read in this article from Alexander Group. Basically, if you’re not ‘optimizing’, you’re throwing caution to the wind and losing revenue while helping your sales reps underperform. Here are 5 things to consider when ‘optimizing’ your territories:

1. Define the most important targets.
2. Weigh each target accurately.
3. Calibrate your index.
4. Review your results.
5. Make changes to the territories based on those results.

As stated, you can have great products and great sales reps BUT if you don’t ‘optimize’ your sales rep’s territories, you’re losing revenue and not utilizing your best sales reps.

What to Do Next

At this point you’ve either already been creating sales territories for your team or you haven’t.  If you have, congrats! You’re one of the organized ones. Feel free to modify your approach based on the information above and if you have anything to add feel free to chime in.

If you don’t currently use sales territories for your team don’t fret.  It’s not too late!

Check out these other blog posts to learn more about Territory Management

Below you will find great information on territory management and how you can set your team up for success by utilizing the best practices associated with it.  Feel free to check it out and if you have any input let us know.

Stop Guessing: The Truth about Territory Management

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales automation and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

 

18 Experts Share Top Sales Enablement Best Practices

The B2B landscape has changed...a lot.

The traditional sales process used to look something like this:

1. Marketing would hand leads over to the sales team
2. The sales team would try to close the deal

The two departments operated in silos. And, while this simplistic “us vs them” mentality used to work, it doesn’t anymore.

Today, there are an average of 5.4 stakeholders involved in the purchase process. Consumers are more educated, and sales cycles longer.

The growing complexity of the B2B sales environment has blurred the lines between sales and marketing. It has become harder to ensure reps are having the right types of conversations with prospects, while being equipped with the right tools and content to drive deals through each stage of the pipeline.

The stats reflect this:

Content: Only 35% of salespeople think marketing knows what content they need
Communication: ⅓ of marketing and sales teams don’t talk regularly
Accessibility: 88% of sales professionals are unable to utilize critical sales material on their smartphones

The disconnect is evident. But, the opportunity is clear. Organizations implementing sales enablement best practices see big bottom line results, such as:

– 99% overall team attainment of sales quota
– 32% higher team sales quota attainment
– 4% year over year growth in average deal size

But, with so many moving pieces – content, communication, tools, processes – where do you start?

To help surface the answer, we reached out to 18 experts from leading sales organizations and training programs such as Sandler, and asked the following question:

List your top 3 sales enablement best practices for 2019?

While we recommend looking through each of the expert responses as they have unique takeaways, we compiled the five most popular best practices below.

 

Top 5 Sales Enablement Best Practices (Based on Expert Response)

We read through all the responses and compiled a shortlist of the top 5 sales enablement best practices to apply in your organization. For more information on each best practice, please read through the expert responses below this section.

 

#1. “Institutionalize” high-performer activities

Identify the best practices of your top sellers and “institutionalize” them for the rest of the team to leverage at relevant points in the sales cycle.

 

#2. Give reps quick access to content

According to the American Marketing Association, 90% of content goes unused by sales teams. The leading cause: sales reps simply cannot find it.

Experts recommend adopting a sales enablement software that is:

Flexible: recommends content based on performance and different sales event triggers informed by your marketing automation platform. This keeps sales conversations aligned with the different stages in the buyer journey.
Organized: acts as an easy-to-use repository for all content and sales tools.
Integrated: connects with other tools to automate and streamline the sales process.

 

#3. Provide continual training

According to research, 87% of new skills are lost within a month of sales training.

Successful sales organizations provide ongoing training and communication across their content, tools and workflows so that reps know exactly what will be most effective throughout the entire sales cycle.

 

#4. Align content with the buyer journey

95% of buyers buy from someone who gave them content at each stage of the buying process.

Align a) your selling processes and b) content strategy to the customer’s conversion path in order to drive meaningful customer engagement.

 

#5. Streamline with technology

This might seem like an obvious one, but a study by CSO Insights found that 60% of sales organizations report a longer sales cycle due to a lack of proper tools.

The right technology stack can fuel sales efforts because they help with forecasting, goal-setting, training and more. In order to maintain alignment, try to leverage the same technology as the marketing team, where possible.

 

18 Experts Reveal Top Sales Enablement Best Practices

Ok:

That’s a quick recap of the most popular sales enablement best practices. Now its time to dive deeper and see how the experts are applying the different best practices to achieve success in their organizations.

Gavin Harris

Apptega | Vice President of Sales and Operations

1. We have created a value model using DecisionLink that allows us to easily align the value of Apptega to our customer’s unique requirements. Using the platform, we are able to quickly deliver high quality documents that help our champions internally position the financial benefits of moving forward with Apptega.

2. We leverage hyper-personalized and professional quality video outreach for prospecting to new customers and prospects. Leveraging the Cyranoapp.io platform, we can easily engage our executives to participate in packaged outreach efforts to their peers in prospective companies.

3. We continually try to provide value, sharing blog posts and other relevant pieces of content that provide value at every touchpoint throughout the sales cycle.

Colleen Francis

1. Use your best to coach the rest. Identify the best practices of top sellers and “institutionalize” them for the rest of the team to leverage.

2. Create small bites of “just in time” skill development tailored specifically to active deals in the pipeline. Serve these up to sellers in your CRM based on sales stage, deal size, competition and product set.

3. Following every win, get the seller record a quick video documenting the top three things they did to successfully close the deal. Use these videos for real time training served up in your CRM based on when the training will be most effective. For example, trigger the questioning skills training video once the deal reaches the qualify stage.

John Barrows

1. Find a way to tie content to revenue. Determine which content types reps are watching/learning that drives the best results, and share them with everyone else.

2. Interview your best reps and ask them to walk you through their most recent and best sale, starting with qualification and going through each stage of the sales process. Cut up the content, tag it by stage, and put it into a repository where reps can go view what good/great looks like.

3. Invest in a tool that provides “just in time” learning for reps when they need it, instead of training them in-person once and expecting them to remember what to do months later.

Nate Bishop

TextUs | VP of Voice Solutions

My top 3 sales enablement best practices include:

1. Training/coaching,

2. Embracing technology,

3. Industry knowledge.

Everything is always progressing and we need adapt to the ever changing environment. To keep our team at the forefront of industry knowledge we leverage a variety of training and coaching solutions. It is important that we have a finger on the industry pulse, and upcoming trends.

Through weekly coaching we equip our team with a tool set to deliver deep industry insights to our customers and future customers. We’re continuously evaluating new technologies to improve our sales processes and operations to enable our team to focus on having meaningful conversations.

Steve Richard

ExecVision | Founder

1. First define your call types (cold call, lead follow up call, discovery call, demo, closing call, etc.). Then define the 7-10 key ‘behaviors’ that your sales reps should exhibit by call type.

2. Create coaching plans to follow that the reps are moving toward mastery on those key behaviors. Coaching plans need to be a series of coaching interventions over a period of time in order to beat the ‘forgetting curve.’ Google “forgetting curve” if you don’t know what that it. You need to move people from unconsciously incompetent to consciously competent.

3. Run a call of the month contest to make learning fun. Celebrate catching examples of what great calls sound like in the wild. Build your library of best calls to ramp the next generation of reps in half the time.

Bob Apollo

Inflexion Point | Founder

1. Sales enablement is a team effort. You need to actively involve your top sales performers in developing the program. Learn what it is that makes them successful and work out how to equip and enable their colleagues to emulate their success.

2. Package your sales enablement materials into easy-to-find, easy-to-consume, bite-sized chunks that are accessible anywhere. Proactively serve up the materials that are most likely to be useful to the sales person in their current situation.

3. Carefully analyse what is and isn’t used, and look for correlations between the use of specific sales enablement tools and subsequent sales success. Do more of what works, and stop doing what doesn’t.

Tamara Schenk

CSO Insights | Research Director

1. Formalize your sales enablement approach: Align your enablement strategy to the organization’s strategic initiatives. Create a sales enablement charter (business plan) and achieve up to 2-digit win rate improvements.

2. Focus on the customer: Align a) your selling processes and b) your enablement services to the customer’s path to drive effective customer engagement. Those who do, see better win rates.

3. Sales coaching remains a critical gap when it comes to adoption and reinforcement. Mature enablement functions develop sales managers as top sales coaches to improve win rates.

Daniel Disney

The Daily Sales | Founder

1. Utilize all the tools your customers are using. This could include the phone, social media, email, video, networking, post etc. If your customers are using it then you have an opportunity to leverage it to reach them.

2. Don’t fear technology, use it! A lot of salespeople are scared AI will take away their jobs, but the best salespeople are learning how to use it to enhance their jobs. Look at what tools are available, try them, practice and master them.

3. Start learning how to use video. Video is a huge part of the content world right now and is a fast growing platform for sales conversations. It’s also difficult to get comfortable with so now is the time to start practicing and getting past those initial challenges.

Craig Klein

1. Organize leads and prospects by source & disposition/outcome.

2. Ensure all leads (even the cold/dead ones) are getting automated emails from you regularly.

3. Call leads that engage with your emails quickly (within 4 hours).

Chad Burmeister

BDR.ai | CEO

1. Add more virtual BDRs – Until your quota carrying reps are completely booked up, add more virtual BDRs!

2. Remove low value work – Every quarter did into what your SDRs, BDRs, and AEs are doing. Then optimize their daily work so that they focus less on low value work, and more on higher value work (it’s good for them, it’s good for your company).

3. Look at Saleshood – Elay Cohen and their team is amazing. Great solution that will change how you train your sales team!

Matt Sykes

Salescadence | Founder

1. Shift from Managing Time to Measuring it. Effective Sales Enablers are ruthless with their time, they place real value on it, they never give it away for free and only exchange it for something in return.

Tip: Divide your ‘To Do’ list up into ‘Unpaid Admin’ tasks and ‘Paid Revenue’ tasks and spend a minimum of 70% of your day on activities which you can directly or indirectly assign an invoice to.

2. Develop Your Personal Brand. You are who Google says you are and in today’s social market place, it’s possible to position yourself as the ‘go-to’ sales person in your industry.

Tip: Sharpen up your LinkedIn profile and always produce and publish content that’s helpful and of interest to your target market. Providing consistent, valuable information creates a ‘known, liked and trusted’ status.

3. Invest in Your Personal Development. The world of Sales is ever-changing and Ultra High Performers don’t wait for their employer to send them on a training course, they take responsibility for their own success.

Tip: Listening to one of the many sales podcasts available on your daily commute will keep you up to date on the latest trends and on what’s new in the world of Sales Training.

Mike Kunkle

SPASIGMA | Vice President, Sales Enablement Services

Let me start by saying that the next best move for any given sales enablement function is highly contextual, based on how they and their sales force are operating today, and where they both want to be (what they want to achieve) over the next quarter or six months. With that disclaimed, here are the practices I’m hoping we see more of in 2019.

1. Shift to a buyer-oriented selling system
I believe one of the best possible practices is to foster a buyer-orientation across the business. A buyer-orientation means changing the mindset, language and behaviors of the leadership team and employees to an outside-in, other-focused, buyer-centric orientation.This orientation changes language, such as shifting from “quota crushers” to “customer problem solvers,” or from “overcoming objections” to “resolving buyer concerns,” and more. It means understanding your buyer personas and their COIN-OP (Challenges, Opportunities, Impacts, Needs, Objectives, and Priorities) and shifting your prospecting approaches from product-centric to problem/solution centric.

In opportunity management, it means a focus on meeting each decision maker’s buying process exit criteria, or things that each buyer needs to see, hear, feel, understand and believe in each stage of their buyers’ journey, to feel comfortable moving forward to the next stage with you. To learn more, I have a (free) recorded webinar on Sales & Marketing Management Magazine’s SMMConnect channel.

2. Get a sales enablement charter in place
Have you seen the number of sales enablement definitions in the market? Every sales analyst has one, the Sales Enablement Society has one, the Association for Talent Development’s Sales Enablement Community of Practice has one, and I think your grandmother might have one at this point.

I’m hoping we see more consensus this year about enablement being not just marketing-related or readiness and training related, or technology-related, but that it continues to evolve to a cross-functional discipline including marketing/messaging/content, training/readiness/ongoing development, and technology and tools, at a minimum, with possibly an expansion toward sales selection.

I recommend that you review these various current definitions and get a solid understanding of all aspects of sales enablement, and then develop a charter that clearly delineates what sales enablement aspects your function will address, who you will partner with cross-functionally, the outcomes you will support, and how you will work together to achieve them.

As the old saying goes, “you can’t hit a target you don’t see.” A charter fosters alignment and sets clear expectations, ensuring clarity and focus and increasing your chance of success.

3. Evolve toward performance consulting and systems thinking
Once you have the building block of sales enablement in place (see this SlideShare for the building blocks) you can begin to evolve to a consulting practice that identifies and solves problems to improve sales performance. I believe this is the highest and best use of sales enablement and is where I believe and hope the profession is heading.

Performance consulting is a systematic and holistic approach to improve workplace performance and achieve business goals.

Performance consulting:

– Is grounded in analytics, diagnostics, and root cause analysis
– Considers of a broad array of organizational and individual factors that influence human performance
– Includes selection, design, and development of the most appropriate solution to solve the identified performance problem
– Implements initiatives using proven-effective practices for the selected intervention and change practices including communication, follow-through, measurement, analysis, evaluation, and adjustment to ensure results are achieved.I believe this is a natural evolution for sales enablement and that we will see the more advanced in the profession moving toward performance consulting and holistic systems thinking in 2019.

4. [Bonus] Create more effective learning systems
I’m going to offer a bonus fourth practice. I see more organizations trying to train more effectively and get a return on their training investment, and I believe this trend will continue in 2019.I believe we’ll see more organizations favoring bite-sized courses (microlearning that targets one or two key learning objectives at a time, but often strung together into a larger curriculum, as needed).

I believe video will continue to rise in popularity, as well, delivered in these online courses, with reinforcement, crowdsourced best practice sharing, and the use of job aids/performance support and workflow performance support.

Finally, I believe we’ll see continued growing focus on enabling managers to diagnose performance issues to target their time with reps, and coach reps to mastery, whether through virtual/video coaching, team coaching, or one-one-one field coaching. This will include not just coaching in general, but also enabling, empowering and engaging managers in sales onboarding and other ongoing training, as part of the learning system, to coach their reps to mastery with any key skills and competencies that are taught.

Brian Sullivan

Sandler | Vice President, Sandler Enterprise Selling

To share three 2019 best practices, I’ll start with the definition of the term – “procedures shown by experience to produce optimal results”.1. First, meet with each new major account at the start of the business relationship to identify the account’s five most important success factors. These become the substance for client satisfaction, not boilerplate factors your organization uses to survey all accounts.

2. Second, convert your major account “quarterly business reviews” to “quarterly value reviews” focused on the value you’ve delivered in the previous quarter and the value you are expected to deliver in the upcoming time frame. This totally different perspective, while focused completely on client value, also breeds new business opportunities.

3. And last, understand that account retention is not a noun. It’s a verb. It’s not what you get. It’s what you do. Honestly assess your organization’s performance regarding the reasons that major accounts stay or go – their critical retention factors. But beyond simply assessing your performance, build accountable action items in each area to improve the relationships and actively increase account retention.So, three best practices to help, by definition, produce optimal 2019 results.

Irene Becker

Just Coach It | Chief Success Officer

Sales enablement becomes very important as an organization grows past a sales team of 50 representatives. Smaller teams should, however, have a system in place that creates ownership and accountability for sales and revenue growth. Each sales representative, each marketing collateral or initiative is critical to the customer experience, and the customer experience is the hot button for sales success.

1. Make the customer experience a vital part of your ecosystem.

The customer experience is a vital part of sales the sales journey. Now, more than ever before the conversations/interactions/touchpoints (face to face or virtual) you have with prospects and customers need to be delivered in the right way, at the right time and include using the right technology as a lever for sales enablement.

Sales and marketing teams must work together to provide the right incentives, channels and solutions that develop a strong customer management ecosystem that can be monitored; an ecosystem that will also identify any gaps in the customer experience that need to be addressed and how they will be addressed.

2. Coach and train with an emotionally intelligent edge.

Develop sticky coaching and training that helps people upskill, improve and also retain what they have learned. Xerox notes that 87% of sales training content is forgotten within one month of the training, we need to develop coaching and training programs that are tools, are aligned for maximum engagement and results.

Emotional intelligence, the ability to understand your emotions, manage your emotions and understand the emotions of others is critical to every aspect of the customer journey and sales cycle. Giving your teams training and coaching is emotionally intelligent is critical to sales results and to preparing your people to be the best they can be under stress and also when dealing with different peoples and situations.

3. Leverage marketing content and technology.

It is important to use marketing content in whitepapers, videos, blogs and all social/digital media to support every stage of the sales cycle. Develop systems that create transparency and report between the marketing and sales department so that new materials can be created with the input of those who are at the front line

There are many excellent digital sales tools and apps. Choosing the right technology and be a big help in goal-setting, training and more. The need to map the customer journey and to deliver the right message in the right format and at the right time is critical and technology can be a very important tool/resource.

Quyen Chang

Financialforce | Senior Director, Head of Global Enablement

As an enablement professional, it is important to remember the following:

1. Focus on sales playbook – content and assets for everyone to be successful.
– Make sure to have feedback from product, marketing, sales contributors
– Confirm that the playbook outlines the sales process and content to help throughout each sales stage

2. Focus on productive technology for those in the field to do their job: Salesforce, Saleshood, Outreach, Zoom.

3. Focus on the people: how often are you working on continued enablement programs for managers, individual contributors and the collaboration with pre and post sales teams.

Mike Schultz

RAIN Group | President

1. First, never stop training. Sales training is about changing behavior. This can’t be done in a 2- or 3-day training event and isn’t about one program or another. Sales enablement leaders need to provide ongoing training across a variety of sales skills in order to build a top performing sales team.

2. Second, they need to provide sales coaching. An effective coach can be the most significant factor in a seller’s success. They motivate sellers, help them build goal and action plans, advise sellers to win deals, and hold sellers accountable. Unfortunately, too many sales coaches either don’t do these things or they don’t do them well and sales performance suffers.

3. Lastly, building off of sales coaching, sales enablement should help sellers become extremely productive. Forty-three percent of sellers at Top Performing Sales Organizations have the skills to manage their time and day effectively, but only 26 percent of The Rest do. Running Extreme Productivity training and Challenges is a major priority for RAIN Group clients around the globe in 2019.

Michael D. Decker

Medallion Retail | Vice President, Marketing Strategy & Business Development

As a B2B Marketer and Sales pro looking to deliver road tested SQL’s, I employ valuable and consistent content marketing in the form of a weekly blog that simultaneously raises existing prospect awareness and new prospect accessibility on Search.The fun then begins in discerning client perceived “needs” from Vendor provided “solutions” that truly grasp and differentiate.

A great sales team delivers unexpected solutions that go far beyond expectations. This is what’s necessary today as digital solutions evolve at record breaking pace.

A great sales person leverages the advantages of seeing the forest from the trees.

1. See your Clients real competition.

2. Understand the gap.

3. Leverage your product and services to fill it with a tangible and custom solution — seeing is believing.

Germain Brion

Chargebee | Vice President of Sales

1. We are scaling heavily in 2019. Our biggest enablement pain is to streamline onboarding as we 3x team size. This means we hired someone to “own” onboarding and the LMS roll-out.

2. The second best practice is to “trust the team,” they can be experts in very niche areas of their trade; by giving them space to share learnings and shine, we encourage a culture of growth and learning and source great ideas.

3. Finally, we are now doing regular marketing check-ins to ensure the Sales Team has relevant collateral throughout the year.

What Sales Enablement Best Practices Will You Implement in 2019?

There you have it – 18 experts shared the top sales enablement practices to implement in 2019.

Which ones are going to use? Any others you’d add?

Let us know in the comments below.

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Hottest B2B Sales Trends in 2019

Guest post by Scott Miraglia

2019 is another year in an era that is seeing rapid-fire advancements in technology. That means there are more channels than ever before in which to appeal to potential customers. It’s an exciting time, but one with an undercurrent of anxiety. For example, according to a LinkedIn survey of B2B sales challenges in 2019, respondents cited such things as pipeline consistency and having more meaningful interactions with customers as their prime worries.

These are all valid concerns. What’s interesting is that trends we’re seeing right now are poised to alleviate this stress and solve many of these issues in one fell swoop—provided sales teams leverage these trends wisely and effectively. Below we list how.

AI and big data benefit sales

This first trend gets right to the heart of the 800-pound digital gorilla in the room: big data. This is much more than a simple buzz term or fleeting trend—it’s the overarching theme of information accumulation in today’s world. Human beings generate a staggering 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day, and, needless to say, your typical sales team can’t manage that data and extract crucial insights from it on their own.

This is where artificial intelligence enters the picture. With advances in machine learning over the past few years we’ve seen AI go from being a sci-fi pipe dream to a real-world component of many sales and marketing solutions. There are AI-powered tools that can help sales and marketing teams do everything from schedule meetings (X.ai) to ad retargeting (Shoelace) to workflow automation (Troops) to A/B testing and website personalization (Convertize) to… well, you get the idea.

But AI powered big data solutions also help B2B sales teams in three fundamental ways:

1. Generating new leads
2. Allowing for the creation of personalized marketing campaigns
3. Guiding product pricing

To the first point, AI is facilitating lead generation because no longer do individuals have to sift through market research statistics, survey forms, email lists, and social media info for actionable insight into customer profiles. With so much new data coming in every day, AI shoulders the burden by dealing with many mundane tasks, which frees up salespeople to better develop initiatives to reach their target audience and generate leads.

AI can then further sift through these massive data lakes to glean insight into market price points, which will help companies set product prices. But AI trends further benefit sales teams to the point we’re now seeing it become an extension of the team. More on this below.

AI becomes a virtual sales department

2019 is poised to become the year when artificial intelligence evolves from being a handy tool to a bonafide sales team in its own right. Enter AI and, specifically, chatbots. This is a global market that’s ascending like a rocket, as chatbots are expected to be a 1.2 billion-dollar industry by 2025. Indeed, chatbots have been around for a couple years, but the reason they’re becoming integral to the sales strategy now is simple: people finally trust AI.

According to Forbes, a majority of both baby boomers and millennials actually approve of the customer service provided by chatbots. These little virtual assistants can answer most questions instantly, and, most crucially, they operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week without a break.

The only question left is, are chatbots as helpful for B2B sales teams as they are in the consumer-facing world? Can they handle more nuanced and technical queries put forth by companies in the fields of information technology, software, manufacturing, and others? The answer is yes.

All chatbots use machine-learning algorithms to fuel their interactions, thus the more a chatbot interacts with a customer—in any field—the more effective it gets. Any small, medium, or large-sized B2B business with a solid CRM data-management tool in place might only need a few months to implement a customer-service-ready chatbot.

CRM goes 360

Above we mentioned how even a basic chatbot can handle complex customer interactions when it has access to well-managed CRM data. That’s where AI enters the picture yet again. Just like machine learning is powering chatbots, it’s also powering advanced CRM solutions as well, helping companies of all sizes to manage data that humans simply aren’t capable of.

But while sales teams now have a welcome assist from the aforementioned AI, the onus is still on people to turn all this data they accumulate into something useful. In other words, how deeply salespeople look into CRM data is going to determine how effective their strategies really are. How to do this involves going beyond sales forecasting and tracking interactions. It means gaining a single 360° view of customers across all channels. Doing so yields many advantages, such as:

– The ability to improve customer interaction and build better relationships
– More accurate customer segmentation
– The knowledge to provide better customer service based on buying habits

This is particularly vital for B2B operations, whose sales cycles are notoriously long. In the enterprise-facing world, it takes time to build a relationship with prospects and move them down the sales funnel. Being well-armed with comprehensive knowledge of a prospect’s interests and behaviors, as well as what channels they are using and when, puts your sales department in prime position to achieve the three goals listed above.

Conclusion

The most crucial lesson to take away from the points listed above is that of integration. These trends are facilitating the success of sales teams in today’s world—but only if the CRM in question is properly integrated. There’s an alarming report by Forbes that states many companies have data spread out across a whopping 35-different info-gathering systems. Not so surprisingly, these companies are unhappy with the results. The only way to solve the problem is to fully integrate your CRM, and let AI do the heavy lifting where it concerns big data.

Scott Miraglia

Scott is the CEO of Elevation Marketing. Scott is dedicated to helping his talented teams develop unique and effective integrated marketing programs that help employees realize their full potential while serving up impressive business wins for clients.

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales automation and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

Ask the Right Questions, Close More Deals

You’re there to sell something, but how can you come across as not selling and why is this important? It’s important because no one wants to feel like they’re being sold to. As soon as a person realizes they’re the subject of a sales pitch, human nature kicks in and they will instinctively shut you out. However, this relationship can be salvaged. If you know how to ask the right questions, at the right time, and in the correct tone, your prospects won’ feel like they’re being sold to. The result: more closed deals. 

Being able to connect with a potential client by asking the right questions is the key to becoming a  success sales rep.

Here are some persuasive words that a sales rep can use to get more deals to close…

Amazing. This word pulls on emotion and causes people to take action. It’s best to use it sparingly in describing things that merit excitement.  

Example: Try this amazing new, faster, updated version of [fill in the blank].

Avoid. Help your customer better achieve their goals while protecting against a loss.

Example: Avoid a larger bill with your current hosting provider and save $500 a month with us.

Because. If a reason of why something needs to be done, they are more likely to respond the way you want them to.

Example: Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?

First. Denotes exclusivity and grabs the potential clients attention. It introduces the element of surprise.

Example: I’d like to show you the latest product updates.

Fix. If you show your potential client you can fix the issues they face, you earn a their business and repeat business.

Free. Using zero decreases the price and increases the value.  

I don’t know. Never mislead your potential client! They will know and won’t do business with you. By admitting you don’t know something builds trust with your potential client. The best way to admit, “I don’t know” is by directly saying it, then using the client’s unanswered question as a follow-up item.

Imagine. Customers who have a firm understanding of how they would implement your offer are more likely to buy. Paint a picture or draw out your proposal compared to what they have.

Now. Demonstrate the benefits prospects may receive if they buy your product or lease your software NOW. Be clear about the benefit now.

Example: How would this product help you or your business now?

Save. Frame an opportunity as a clear win for prospects and existing users.

Example: Sign up for your first month and get 10% off.

Simple. Depicts there’s a small (or non-existent) learning curve and low switching costs.

Unusual. Customers want to try something different and feel they have something that no one else is doing. Customers will also feel like innovating.

We. It’s important to get the customer to feel you both are on the same team. “We” puts the potential client/client in a team mindset.

10 closing phrases to help you close the deal:

#1.  The assumptive close. Assumes the potential client has decided.

“When should we get started on implementation?”
“What delivery date would you like?”
“Which [package, tier, bundle] are you going with?”

#2. Ask for the sale.

“Is there any reason if I’m improving your overall health insurance (or whatever your selling) coverage, and keeping the price competitive, you wouldn’t want to get started now?”

“If I can (overcome objection), would you like to move forward?”

#3. Ask how they heard about your product/service. Reminds them of why they’re interested and why they’re meeting with you.

“How did you hear about us (product, brand)?”

#4. What are your must haves, could haves you require. This qualifies the prospect so you know what you need to do to close the deal.

“In order for you to move forward, what specs/features/services do you require”

#5. Find out who all the decision makers are and if they can join the meeting.  This seems obvious. Granted, it’s NOT always possible but if you can, you will have a better chance of closing the deal if everyone is on the same page with the same information.

“Are you the only one that makes these decisions or do I need to also speak with someone else?”

#6. Find out which other services they’re evaluating. This allows you to find out the pros and cons of the other competitors to do a comparison of what you’re offering, what the benefits are and why your option is better. Sometimes they won’t offer the information but if you can get it, that’s great!

“What other services/products are you comparing us with?”

#7. Find out what the timeline is for making a decision. This will give you an idea of how long it may take to close the deal.

“When do you plan to (buy, change, etc.)? Is it in a couple of days, weeks, months or years?”

#8. What’s your budget:. You have a bigger chance of closing the deal if you can give them what they want and keep it in their budget.

“What’s your budget?”
“What can you afford?”
“What are you planning on spending?”

#9. When was the last time you made a purchasing decision for a solution like ours?

“When was the last time you purchased a solution like this?”
“Have you purchased a concept like this and if so, when?”

#10. What’s the reason you reached out to us.  Asking this question you will get a few reasons on what you need to focus on to close the deal. It will also give you insight into what your best sources of Marketing are and where to put Marketing dollars in the future.

“I’m curious, what made you reach out to us/me?”

In summation, don’t be afraid to ask the right questions to get the deal. Figure out a road map of how and where you want to take the potential client/client. Ask the right questions to eliminate any red flags along the way. Guide your prospect and paint a picture or draw out what you’re trying to communicate. Uncover if they’re serious buyers and ask the question, “Have I met all of your needs, and is there any reason we can’t move forward?”

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales automation and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

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Cite Sources:
Close.IO 
Hubspot 

 

Shifting Your Sales Team Bell Curve

A bell curve is a performance management technique that is used to assess and measure the performance and hold people accountable. This technique can be applied to many facets of life and business, and a sales team is no exception.

A bell curve is an important business tool for sales reps and their companies, something that determines where leaks exist in the sales funnel and where improvements can be made; helping companies define how many of their sales representatives are high-performing, middle-of-the-road, or low-performing. All of which can help management to redefine training and improve sales quota attainment.

How Companies Benefit from Implementing a Bell Curve

By implementing a bell curve, companies can easily identify the performance level of every employee. This provides a straightforward system for ranking employees; something which is critical in the evaluation of employee performance including improvements, declines, and regular maintenance.

How Companies are Disadvantaged by a Bell Curve

With a bell curve, the biggest disadvantage is the fact that managers are forced to segment their employees by performance. This could unfairly place employees in a lower-tier simply because they have to distribute a specific percentage of employer performances into each range. Sometimes using this scale to rate salespeople is simply too rigid and it can cause negative competition among employees which could in turn impact morale.

Levels of a Bell Curve

When organizations rank their sales teams along a bell curve, employees are divided into different levels based on their performance:

High Performing Organization

Those who fall under the high performer category are employees that a company wants to keep happy, they want to retain them because high performers don’t require any coaching and are very effective when working independently.

Companies that achieve high performer levels for the majority of their employees tend to focus more heavily on consistently achieving high performance across their sales team. Within the high performer category, many employees on the opposite end of the spectrum might leave the company simply because they know they can’t keep up with the level of talent that surrounds them.

Average Performing Organization

Average performers are employees, with coaching, could rise up to the high-performance tier.  Conversely, without coaching, they may drop to the low/non-performer tier. It’s best for organizations to be in this situation because it paves the way for serious potential and optimizes growth with the right tools.

Low/Non-Performer Organization

An organization with many low/non-performers is usually the result of making bad hires. These are probably people who aren’t a good fit for sales so even if you do train them it’s not going to result in a lot of improvement.

Situations like this mean that management should take a step back and recognize that sales issues are caused by the sales staff specifically but rather by bad hiring tactics by the management. Most of the time poor management is a critical problem here and these problems compound with time. The bell curve continues to shift to the left because top performers will leave the company and work with a better organization. Obviously, this is something that should be avoided and rectified.

An Ideal Sales Performance Bell Curve

Ideally, it is best for a sales performance bell curve to be heavily situated around the mid-performance level; or a 20, 70, 10 ratio or a 10, 70, 20 distribution ratio.

The difference between low-performing and average performing reps is minimal, but the difference between top performers and average performers is very significant. Achieving a 5% performance improvement from your middle 60-70% of employees equates to over 70% more revenue than you would get if you achieved a 5% performance improvement from your top representatives.

This is why bell curve adjustments are so important. Focusing resources on your mid-tier is going to get you the greatest return on your investment.

A Good Bell Curve Optimizes Productivity

To optimize productivity with an optimal bell curve, you can use software like SPOTIO. SPOTIO makes your sales team 46% more productive.  It does this by shifting the bell curve forward toward improved productivity for everyone. Software like this helps to improve your bell curve on a general level which has been correlated to increased productivity.

There are key features that you want to look for in the software you select. You want to be able to track trends and establish your bell curve.  You also want the data that can be applied to your sales staff to help establish, define and refine the perfect sales bell curve.

How is this achieved?

Productivity is defined by three important things:

1. Shorter Sales Cycles
2. Increased Conversion Rate
3. Increased Revenue

How sales software (like SPOTIO) helps achieve the ideal bell curve

When you use sales software it engages your entire sales team and provides reliable information to help sales reps achieve performance goals. The ideal bell curve can only be achieved when sales reps have clear visibility into the needs of their customers alongside the analytics that helped them to get the appropriate products to those customers.

The KPI’s from software like SPOTIO  show managers what percentage of sales reps are making their plans, what the composition of the pipeline is. For sales representatives this might not be something that affects their job today but it can enhance their career long-term by providing them with a sales strategy and sales execution that work in tandem. When everyone in an office works toward the same goal, revenue and profitability increase for years to come.

In the end, using sale software as a manager will give you the ability to improve the performance of your middle-tier sales reps. Tools can be provided, reliable data can be viewed, and everyone in your sales funnel can work together toward the same goals.

By improving the performance of your mid-tier employee you can yield the highest ROI for your organization.

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales automation and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

Weekly Reports Sales Manager Should Run [with Template]

KPI reporting can be time consuming, but good KPI reports are essential to data-driven business. Key performance indicators and metrics must be delivered as accessible, interactive reporting documents which give other staff and management key performance insights.

KPI’s are very important in helping a business achieve strategic goals while allowing management to gauge the actions of sales reps within the broader scope of your enterprise. If you take the time to consider what a good KPI report needs to contain before creating your report, you can deliver meaningful results in under 10 minutes every time. The reports that you generate help managers realize where skill sets are best utilized.

Here we’ll be taking you through a look at essential daily KPI’s to request from your sales reps. We’ll also show you which KPI’s work best for weekly reports and exactly how to put together a clear-clear report for your directors, presidents, or partners.

Daily KPI’s from Your Reps

There are many key performance indicators which are essential to understanding how your staff body is functioning as a team. Project management metrics empower management with the information that they need to run a business optimally. Without the hard numbers behind budgets and performance data, communication and delegation within your enterprise are simply ineffective.

Every target-driven sales environment needs daily KPI reports aligned to the strategic goals of your company. Use all or any of the following daily KPI’s to help optimize your enterprise management.

Daily Sales Revenues

Price Per Unit Sold X Total Number of Units Sold for the Week / 7 = Daily Sales Revenue

This simple calculation lets you see which reps are pushing the most gross sales on a day to day basis. Graphing your daily sales revenue KPI over a weekly or monthly time-period gives a clear overview of underperforming and top achievers. Revenues don’t reveal as much insight as profit figures, however, they will allow you to perform certain types of analysis better. Daily sales revenues allow you to gauge the effect of additional funding and resources on potential profitability and growth.

Daily Sales Commissions

Request a daily sales commissions report from all of your reps to ensure that both parties are up-to-date and informed concerning progress towards goals, and possible incentives. Staying aware of the incoming commissions motivates reps and management while delivering key employee insights.

Daily Wages

Depending on the payment structure of your reps, you may need to include a daily wages KPI. By staying current with wages on a day-to-day basis, everyone knows what they are earning and you always know that you have the fees due to your reps factored into your budget. Some businesses use both wages and commissions. In this case, cite both KPI’s on a daily basis.

Daily ROI

Daily Sales Revenues / Total Daily Expenses, Wage & Commissions * 100 = Daily ROI

Return on investment for sales is a calculation which needs to factor in all costs in order to display any degree of accuracy. You need to include fuel, the cost of communications, and any external fees which may be involved in delivering sales, service and support to your customers. One should, however, keep in mind that certain sales pipelines only present a positive return on investment after a significant period of time.

Don’t always accept the daily ROI of your reps as a determining factor of their performance, but rather as a gauge of the efficiency of your funnels.

Opportunity Win Rate

Total Number of Sales Closed / Total Amount of Opportunities = Opportunity Win Rate

This metric will show you which reps have the best closing rate. Sales hinges upon being able to seal the deal, making this KPI integral to finding out who is amassing leads and who is actually selling. Most successful sales managers see the opportunity win rate as one of the most important sales metrics. It allows for a clear overview of which reps are better at closing, which are better suited to each type of pipeline, and presents one with a world of new optimization possibilities when allocating resources to reps.

Weekly KPI’s

The close of every week must be followed by a comprehensive report of the key performance indicators reflecting immediate progress. Include any of these weekly KPI’s to help data-driven decision making by gaining a concise but highly-relevant overview of your business’ performance. Many of these weekly KPI’s could / should be included on your weekly report to upper management which we will cover shortly.

Lead-to-Sale Percentage

Conversion Rate = Total Number of Sales / Number of Leads * 100

Comparing the lead-to-sale percentage across your reps is a great way to assess individual performance.

For example, if you made 30 sales for the month out of 100 potential leads then your sales to lead conversion rate is 30%. A lead-to-sale conversion rate will show managers which reps need additional training or replacement to a different department. Any reps falling below the company-wide sales average need individual attention in some way.

Average Cost Per Lead

Total Lead Acquisition Cost / Total Number of Leads = Average Cost Per Lead

Obtaining an average cost per lead lets you know which reps are under-utilizing their budget, time, and resources. Many issues could be at the root of poor average cost per lead performance ranging from logistics dilemmas to understaffing issues.

Get a weekly report covering the average cost of your reps’ lead acquisition, and you’ll soon discover where your sales teams and pipelines need work.

Quote to Close Ratio

Weekly Quote Total / Closed Weekly Sales * 100 = Closing Ratio Percentage

The quote to close ratio KPI gives you a great indication of how quickly to follow up on prospects within your sales funnel. Sales reps often fail to perform due to quoting too early or too late. Once you find the right balance within your funnel, your reps will all be closing more sales thanks to attentive quoting at precisely when it’s wanted.

Sales Lead to Close Ratio

Weekly Sales Leads Total / Closed Weekly Sales Total * 100 = Sales Leads to Close Ratio Percentage

This KPI shows overall sales efficiency. Depending on your organizational structure, you may want to run this metric for both raw leads and qualified leads independently. You can run the sales leads to close ratio KPI on specific geographical areas in order to get a better feel for where you need to devote your time and resources.

Prospecting Activity

Your sales teams need to capture as much data as possible concerning the resources devoted to seeking and obtaining new leads. Let management and sales staff keep track of calls, emails, meetings, time spent traveling, service or product demos, and any other marketing activities applicable to your sales funnel.

Successful sales prospecting relies on information. Any substantial changes in statistics are usually a key indicator of growth and decline, marking areas that you can improve, replicate, or expand upon as you now know the connection. Capture and include as many prospecting activity metrics as KPI’s as possible to truly understand your potential customers.

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Average Purchase Value

Total Value of Weekly Sales / Total Number of Weekly Sales = Average Purchase Value

The average purchase value KPI gives you a measure of the average sales value of each transaction. Average purchase values need to be segmented according to specific demographics in order to reach an accurate comparison of your marketing efforts. This KPI also allows you to identify which reps are best at selling high and low-end products and services. Certain staff may be far more productive when assigned a particular demographic.

Sales by Product Line

Sales by product line will let you identify the most lucrative products and services in your range, while also uncovering which sales pipelines need better sales prospecting and lead nurturing.

Sales by Channel

This strategic KPI works on both short-term and long-term scales. It shows you exactly which areas of customer acquisition are netting you the most revenue.

Client Meetings Attended

The metrics for meetings attended is fantastic for weekly sales reports. Managers are awarded insights into which staff is making the most of their time, and which would be more productive with less out-of-office time.

Weekly Reporting to Upper-Management

Sales managers will need to deliver a selection of KPI’s and performance metrics to their directors, vice presidents, boards of staff, and other superiors. Weekly sales reports can also be shared between departmental heads to ensure that inter-company collaboration is functioning optimally with communications clear throughout.

A weekly sales report needs to present a comprehensive but concise overview of current sales, your team’s progress towards existing goals, revenues and costs, as well as growth. Additionally, recommendations for organizational and staffing changes which need to be passed by upper-management can be suggested along-side the data to back up the decision.

Putting Together a Winning Weekly Reports

When deciding which key performance indicators to include on your weekly reporting, take the time to compare possible metrics against the goals of your enterprise.

If the KPI you wish to cite doesn’t directly correspond to a strategic insight matched to the vision and operation of your business, then no one but you will be able to find any value in it without a lengthy explanation. Simply put, not all metrics are KPI’s and not all KPI’s should be on every weekly report.

There are, however, basic components which must be on every report. Regardless of the type of business, you do or the product/service supplied, good sales reports will carry these following components at a minimum.

Components of a Weekly Report

The sales and performance information of your reps need to be compiled as a weekly report. Make sure that your report contains all of the necessary relevant information such as the branch name, team, and contact details.

Every good report will start off with the date and the time period that the report will be covering. In this case, it’s a weekly duration. Next, it should list the current sales revenue against the year-end target, also displayed in a clear to read manner.

Progress towards your sales target for the month is handy, while a color-coded key and/or structured formatting always helps to keep everything readable. List the KPI’s which you’ll be reporting with a breakdown for each employee, product, or project that you’re reporting on. Keep every week’s report standardized and accompany each report with a short memorandum.

Crafting a Data-Driven Memorandum

Your memorandum should begin with the week’s main accomplishments.

For example, exceeding performance goals by meeting a sales quota early should be an opening statement which is best backed up by a useful metric or projection for next week’s growth based on this week’s numbers. In addition, be sure to provide a meaningful reason for any shortfalls in sales. If a public holiday resulted in you being shut for a day, or an IT-failure interrupted trading for hours, cite the disturbance. This will help the reader understand the full context of the report without needing to be there.

A good basic set of KPI’s to begin with are:

– Weekly Sales Wages
– Weekly Sales Commissions
– Weekly Sales Revenues
– ROI
– Weekly ROI

Feel free to include any other metric which is directly relevant to the organizational structure, strategic vision, and goals of your enterprise. Just keep in mind that directors don’t want to see hoards of raw data. Rather, provide meaningful results which are supported by rich visuals and explanations in clear-speech. Avoid ambiguity and share all results relevant to the profitability and management of your business.

Ideas, tactical advancements, staffing issues, infrastructure suggestions, and any other motivations for change should be discussed openly but supported by the numbers needed to make your reasoning understood.

Growth, Analysis & Your Own Basic Weekly Sales Template

Not all enterprises and business owners will want extensive reports with lengthy memorandums. Smaller businesses will get by and function better with a small selection of meaningful KPI’s reporting the basics.

In the early stages of growth, staying simple and focused is often better than getting lost along a progression of endless optimization. Once established, there are endless ways to analyze information, using key performance indicators as a cornerstone of actionable reporting and data segmentation.

Take a look at our weekly sales report template if you need a spreadsheet to begin crafting insightful daily and weekly reports.

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Weekly Sales KPI Report Template

Daily & Weekly Sales Report Templates LP Image

Reports Sales Managers Should Run [with Templates]

Download our weekly sales report templates if you need a spreadsheet to begin crafting insightful daily and weekly reports for your team.

 

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