1. 32 WINNING EDGE
FEATURE | COACHING
OPEN FOR
SUCCESS
MATT JEFFERSON explains your crucial first
steps to creating a high performance sales team
S
o, you have just started a new role as
a sales manager or inherited a sales
team – what do you do? First, start
with the ‘who’ – the people, then the
‘how’ – the sales process, and finally
the ‘why’ – the metrics and targets
they and you will in effect be measured by.
THE WHO
Like anything in life you need to sit down with
each of your team and understand why they are
here, what their journey has been to this point,
and what their destination or end goal is. Are
they career sales professionals, in which case this
might be a step up within the organisation, or
possibly one step in a sales career that may in
fact inevitably end somewhere else? Alternatively,
have they been thrust in to a sales role from a
technical or product background and moved to
what we in sales jokingly refer to as ‘the dark
side’? I do come across the latter scenario quite
often and find that there really hasn’t been much
sales training or coaching and sometimes little
management support.
Importantly, what motivates them – money,
status, job satisfaction, recognition? You’d expect
money to be the biggest motivator, but that isn’t
always the case. I have had success by taking a
financial value and matching it to what different
team members are interested in: one might like
motorsports but want someone else to organise a
track day; another might enjoy European city
breaks; and some do just want hard cash.
In my experience, adequate recognition has
always been a significant factor, as salespeople
are usually working longer hours than many
other employees and are under more pressure
from the business and the CEO. They are also
easiest to measure in terms of performance – the
numbers don’t lie, so when they are doing well
recognition is essential.
Think about their role – what do they enjoy
and what do they dislike? What do they do well,
and where can they improve? Yes, I
can hear all of you say, sales admin
and updating the CRM often comes top
of the latter list. Reducing sales admin
and increasing selling time is always a
winner… time management is critical in most
roles, but in sales even more so, as your buyers
are only available during working hours, so an
early bird really does catch the worm and
starting the day without being prepared and
without a plan is a disaster.
What are their capabilities and do their roles
match current skills and experience? Very often,
there aren’t job or role descriptions or KPIs and
so it may not be clear to them or to you what
their role constitutes or what their responsibilities
are. Developing a capability matrix can help
here and may involve tweaking or refocusing
current team members’ roles as the more specific
and focused they are, the more measurable they
are in terms of success.
Continuous improvement is really important
and where you have a team and strong players in
certain areas of the sales process it works well to
pair them up with others who are weak in these
areas. The end result is that everyone improves.
Your own ability at breaking the ice, building
ISMM.CO.UK
50%OF SALES GO
TO THE FIRST
SALESPERSON TO
CONTACT THE
PROSPECT
SOURCE: INSIDESALES.COM
50%OF SALES GO
TO THE FIRST
SALESPERSON TO
CONTACT THE
PROSPECT
SOURCE: INSIDESALES.COM

2. WINNING EDGE 33
COACHING | FEATURE
ever-important follow-up. The follow-up has to
be timely and I usually insist that it is scheduled
in the buyer’s calendar, otherwise it takes twice
as long to gain that important feedback and also
your time isn’t respected by the buyer.
Other key areas should include negotiation
and close, pipeline management and forecasting.
If you ask a team member why a certain
prospect is going to buy from you rather than
from someone else, and you get a pregnant
pause, this usually elicits a number of areas of
weakness in the sales process that need to be
strengthened immediately. I usually come across
either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic
salespeople, so percentage likelihood of winning
ranges from 90% to 5% – and you need more
precise forecasting than this.
Coaching all the team members across the
sales process and refining their skills and ability
in each area is essential to making them all high
performers. There is a balance to be struck
between coaching them and letting them make
mistakes to see their errors – and you will find
yourself having to step in from time to time to
save the sale. Just don’t take the credit!
THE WHY
Lastly, reviewing the metrics and targets is key.
These must be done together as each impacts on
the other. If your metrics are wrong then you’ll
never over-achieve on your targets. By starting
with the target, you can work back to what
metrics to use and activities to conduct to hit it.
If you know the average sales value and the
conversion rates for each team member then you
can quickly identify how many sales calls or
meetings need to be performed to reach target
and by when. This will, of course, differ across
the team and you can identify strengths and
weaknesses very clearly here. Also, by having
data and metrics about your ideal customers and
those that convert most you can focus on the
right customer segments.
I would love to say that we always know these
numbers, but unfortunately that isn’t the case,
and sometimes you just have to use your
experience from similar industries.
Asking when the targets were last hit is an
essential question. There really is no point in
having targets that no one can hit, as this simply
creates a demotivated team with low morale, and
if there are some good salespeople in that team
they’ll soon go elsewhere, as no one wants to be
at 50% of target all year. You need to look
behind the numbers and truly understand: what
is realistic based on historical data, where your
product/service sits in the market right now, and
how you are going to drive more leads in to your
sales funnel to hit that growth.
trust and demonstrating integrity will be crucial
in them opening up and being honest with you.
If you are able to demonstrate some of your own
background, challenges and even past
vulnerabilities that will help in levelling the
conversation. After all, we all make mistakes; the
key is not repeating them.
Once you understand their roles, where they fit
in the company, their motivations, and their
strengths and weaknesses, this places you in a
good position to understand the people aspect
and how you can coach them to be the best.
THE HOW
Next, look at the sales process. What does your
team do, how does a lead come in to the
business, how is it captured and nurtured, and
what systems and processes are in place to turn
that lead, if qualified, into a customer? Of
course, if you don’t know what a good lead is,
and by what criteria it should be qualified, then
you need to take a step back and first build an
ideal customer profile.
Sales process means analysing the sales lead
workflow, marketing automation, CRM system,
and data capture. How the team prepares and
researches for sales calls or meetings and the
MATT JEFFERSON is a
Fellow of the ISMM, sales
management consultant,
interim sales director and
business growth service adviser.
Visit: www.jeffersonsales.co.uk
ISMM.CO.UK