Sales are the lifeblood of any business. Beating the plan
yields optimism. Missing the number could mean a scramble for survival. Without
sales, your business literally has nothing.
For this reason, I want sales to be scalable and predictable
for our companies. And yet, “art form” is often a phrase used to describe
sales. Art is neither scalable, nor predictable. Science is. When it comes to
adding science to my sales team, I turn to my friend and advisor Mark Roberge,
sales scientist, Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot, and author of the new book,
The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to
Go from $0 to $100M.
Here are the ten mistakes Mark sees many businesses make
when scaling sales:
Mistake #1: Hiring salespeople with your gut
Hiring rock star sales people is the most important aspect
to sales success. Yet, so many organizations “wing” the entire hiring process.
Every sales context is different and, thus, every company has a different ideal
hiring profile. Appreciate the uniqueness of your sales context, establish a
theory of the hiring criteria that will work for you, and be disciplined about
scoring every candidate against that criteria. As you bring on salespeople,
this process enables you to learn from your mistakes, iterate, and hone in on
the perfect hiring profile.
Mistake #2: Under-utilizing the sales compensation plan
The sales compensation plan is the most under-appreciated
tool in the CEO’s toolkit. In thinking back to the major strategic
re-directions we navigated at HubSpot, many of them were instigated by aligning
the sales compensation plan with the desired strategic change. Whether looking
to enter a new industry, gain market share with a particular product line, or
expand into a new geography, the sales compensation plan will be the most
effective driver of change.
Mistake #3: Mis-aligning sales and marketing
Traditionally, sales and marketing are two groups that have
not gotten along. Marketing perceives sales as a bunch of over-paid spoiled
brats. Sales feels marketing sits around doing arts and crafts all day. In an
age with the majority of buying journey’s starting online, this dysfunctional
relationship is the kiss of death for a company.
A properly aligned sales and marketing team is a
pre-requisite to a healthy business. Quantify the deliverables that marketing
and sales should commit to one another. At HubSpot, we call this agreement the
Sales and Marketing Service Level Agreement, or SMarketing SLA. For example,
marketing will deliver 1,500 leads per quarter that are contacts from Fortune
5000 companies within the retail, manufacturing, or technology industries.
Sales will call these leads within 2 hours and convert 20% of them into sales
pipeline within 30 days. Measure the SLA progress and share the report daily
with the entire team. You are now empowered to manage your sales and marketing
funnel every day!
Mistake #4: Not planning far enough in advance
It takes 2 months to hire a new sales person, 3 months to
ramp them to full productivity, and a 4 month sales cycle to close a deal. This
situation is not uncommon for a business. If anything, these timeframes may be
on the aggressive side. Yet, even with these assumptions, it takes 9 months
from the decision to hire a new salesperson to the time when they are fully
productive. If you are a sales driven organization, your 2015 results are
largely baked with the team on board in Q1. Most of the hiring you are doing
now is driving your 2016 results. Plan ahead.
Mistake #5: Making forecasting, rather than coaching, the
sales manager’s primary focus
Many sales managers spend the majority of their time
managing the sales forecast and pipeline. This is a lost opportunity. Managers
should spend the majority of their time coaching and developing their sales
people. Effective sales coaching increases sales productivity. The best coaches
diagnose the one or two skills that will make the biggest difference in a
salesperson’s performance and customize a coaching plan to that skill. They use
metrics to conduct the diagnosis. I call this process “metrics-driven sales
coaching”.
Mistake #6: Motivating through fear rather than metrics
I always ask candidates why they want to move on from their
current employer. Many of them complain about the fear-based, micro-management
of their current environment. This type of militant management style does not
motivate sales people, especially today’s millennial generation. Instead,
automate a daily dashboard stack ranking the team on total dials, total
connects, total discovery calls, total demos, total sales, etc. Send the
dashboard out every day to the entire sales and marketing team and include the
CEO. As a result, salespeople will be able to understand where they are
gravitating from the “success blue-print” and self-diagnosis the areas in the
funnel where they need work. At the end of the day, the salesperson, sales
manager, and the company are on the same team. Enabling everyone with the daily
metrics will provide the motivation and discipline you desire.
Mistake #7: Letting new salespeople shadow top performers
“Welcome to our company Bob. Do you remember our top
salesperson, Sue? For your training, you are going to shadow her for two
months.”
The shadowing approach to sales training is neither scalable
nor predictable. In my experience, top salespeople are at the top for different
reasons. They all bring a unique “super-power” to the table and lean into it
heavily. A ride-along sales training strategy may dissuade sales people from
leaning into their super-power. It may also encourage them to pick up bad
habits from their peers. Instead, create a sales process. Certify salespeople
by quantifying their aptitude with each stage of the sales process. Provide
enough detail in the sales process to guide the salesperson but don’t make it
too constraining that the salesperson cannot apply their “super-power”.
Mistake #8: Buying technology for management rather than the
front-line salespeople
The majority of sales technology purchased over the last few
decades has been purchased for the sales leader to conduct pipeline reviews and
manage forecasts. The end result? The front-line salespeople do not use the
software. Data integrity suffers and the original utility of the purchase is
never realized.
In the last year, we have seen an explosion in sales
technology that actually benefits the salesperson. It helps the salesperson
sell faster by removing admin tasks and streamlines the processes they conduct
dozens of times per day. It helps sales people sell better by illustrating the
full buyer context to the salesperson at all times. Furthermore, technology
that benefits salespeople is the best path toward capturing the data that sales
leaders need to run the business. Try Hubspot's free product
www.getsidekick.com as a starting point for your organization.
Mistake #9: Not experimenting enough
Every sales context is unique. Who do you sell your product
to? How complicated is your product? How expensive is it? Is your product sold
direct or through partners? Do most sales originate from inbound leads or
outbound calls? Is it 1995 or 2005 or 2015? Varying answers to these questions
call for varying approaches to the sale. Establish a baseline funnel. Form some
theories on how the funnel can be improved. Devise and execute experiments.
Iterate and improve.
Mistake #10: Relying on outdated demand generation
techniques
When was the last time you bought something from a cold
caller? How about from a piece of direct mail or unsolicited email?
Today’s buyer is empowered by the Internet. They are no
longer receptive to outbound calls, emails, or advertising. In fact, buyers
invest in technologies to keep these messages out of their lives. Today’s buyer
begins their journey online, with a search in Google or question in social
media. Yet, organizations continue to poor the majority of their sales and
marketing budgets into outbound demand generation. Diversify your efforts with
an inbound strategy.
Hire a journalist and team them up with the thought
leaders and domain experts at your company. Have the journalist produce an
eBook, a handful of blog articles, and a few dozen social media messages every
month. Align the content with the questions your buyers have at the start of
their journey. Help buyers find you.
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