| Top Story |
 |
|
| This is a weekly column transcribed from my Radio Show. The "Top Story" is the major discussion each week in which I address in great depth and detail, aspects of selling that are pertinent to your job everyday. |
|
|
|
|
Printer Friendly Version |
|
I was talking to one of my sales management clients today, and he said, "How can I earn the respect of my salespeople?" I said, "You really have to do just what you said. You have to earn their respect. It's not bestowed upon you. It's not given to you."
You have to earn the respect of your salespeople. Once they realize that you are completely dedicated to their success, and you apply the Four F's as I'm going to describe them today, they will respect you. Now does that mean they're going to like you all the time? Does that mean your salespeople are going to be your best friend and want to invite you over to their house and go out eat dinner and drink with you? The answer is no. In most great organizations, the sales manager is slightly removed from the team that he or she has created, and that's OK. Sometimes the salespeople have to get together and talk about you behind your back. That's good. It means that they respect you, but they don't consider you their best friend.
OK, let's get into the Four F's. The first F stands for Fair. When I meet salespeople I get brought in when morale is low and people aren't feeling motivated and they're upset or angry or they want to leave or there's been a lot of turnover. When I start to do my interviewing to find out what's really going on there, it's amazing to me how many times the salespeople legitimately feel like they're being treated unfairly. Now sometimes they are not being treated unfairly but they think they are. But sometimes they really are.
Let me give you some examples. If you have some type of system where leads that come into your company are distributed, and you as the sales manager develop some favoritism, or somebody's in the doghouse and you want to punish them by not giving them leads, or someone is more effective at getting people to buy and you give them a higher percentage of the leads, that's not fair. If you are going to develop leads by geography or by industry or by round robin, you need to distribute those leads in a very fair way. Does this mean that sometimes the lesser effective salespeople are going to get the best leads? Yes. That's just the way it happens. But in terms of fairness, you have to give every salesperson the equal right to be successful, the equal opportunity to be successful.
Let me give you another example. I have another client who decided that the salespeople were making to much money. Unilaterally in mid-year, that company decided commissions by 40%. These salespeople had a written compensation agreement, and just because they were having a great year doing everything their company wanted them to do and asked them to do, the leadership of that company said, "You're making too much money. We're going to cut the commission." Is that fair? No, that's not fair either.
What I mean is that you have to basically be as wise as Solomon when you're a sales manager, and any time you get the opportunity, you come down on the side of fairness. That means we always need to be asking ourselves questions as sales managers, "What's fair?" Is it fair for me to have the leads be distributed in an equitable manner? Yes. Is it fair for me to have all the territories have the equal opportunity to be successful? Yes. Is it fair for me to spend a good amount of time with people who are leading the charge instead of neglecting them and spending with the weaker salespeople? The answer is yes. You have to be fair to individuals, and we always have to be fair to the organization. It's a holistic approach. We have to be fair to the individuals and fair to the team. That's the first F: fairness.
The second F stands for Firm. Again, these ideas come from my own practice where I interview salespeople, and I also talk to sales managers to find out what's really going on within their companies. Another reason that salespeople get frustrated is that they think that their leadership has feet of clay. If someone whines long enough or if somebody complains loudly enough, the sales team, the sales leadership will change their tune, and they won't stand their ground. They won't be firm.
For example, if you have an organization that demands a certain level of reporting where they need either forward-looking appointment-type schedules so they know where all the salespeople are, or historical, back-filled, where-were-you-type statistical based documentation, everybody needs to comply. If a few people don't and they're not held accountable for those actions, what message does that send to the rest of the salespeople? If someone just decides not to submit their expense reports on time and everybody else does, and the entire team gets penalized for it, then the sales management is as fault for not being firm in their policies.
One of my clients in Cleveland, Ohio had a difficult time getting the salespeople to submit their monthly reports. The guy came to me and said, "You know, I don't want to be their mother or their babysitter or the task-master or the jail-keeper. But I have to get these people to submit these reports. I have eight salespeople that cover the entire United States and Canada and Mexico, and without knowing where they are I can't manage this organization from Cleveland when I've got these people running around the country. I don't know where they are, where they've been, whom they've talked to. If I go out on a customer call I need to be in the loop. I need to find out what's going on."
So I said, "What's the accountability? What happens when they don't submit their reports?" The answer was, "Not much. There's really no teeth in the policy." I said, "You need to practice firmness. Let's look at it a couple different ways. You have an annual sales contest, don't you?" He said, "Yes, it's based on profit and growth and percentage growth in certain accounts, and three to five key things that we key in on every year." I said, "What about this? How about if you give people a running start. You say that in the next 30 days we're expecting the reports to come in on the Tuesday after the weekend. In order to be eligible for this year's sales contest, you have to have 90% of your monthly reports in on time. If you don't meet that standard of 90% of your reports in on time, you won't be eligible for this year's sales contest." He thought about that for a while, and he said, "That's a fabulous idea."
Let me tell you that the people who participated in the sales contest were eligible for bonuses from between $3,000 - $30,000 depending on where they finished in their company. How many people do you think were late with their reports once it came down that if they didn't have their reports submitted on time they wouldn't be eligible for the sales contest? He had within 30 days 100% compliance. He practiced firmness.
OK, the first F is Fair; the second F is Firm. The third F stands for Fun. Maybe the third F "Fun" should actually be the first F. What I mean by that is that in my experience, the sales organizations that I'm around that are the most productive and most efficient are the ones who are having the most fun. What that mean is it's hard enough to be successful in sales. Think about this. I'll define a career path for you. If you're really good at what you do, you're going to hear "no" half the time. If you're average, you're going to hear "no" about two-thirds of the time. If you're below average, you're going to hear "no" about three-quarters of the time. Generally speaking you're getting paid by what you earn. If you don't do well, you're not going to make any money. A lot of the people you want to talk to the first few times don't want to see you or talk to you. And by the way, it's straight commission. How many people want that job? Not too many.
I've just defined for you the way 90% of most salespeople are paid: straight commission, half or more rejection, facing rejection every single day, not knowing what's going to happen when orders are brought in if they're going to be filled properly. It's just an amazingly potentially stressful business. In spite of all that, those of us who have been successful in sales (in my case over 27 years) thrive in that environment. I couldn't consider doing anything else. I love the profession of selling. I love the insecurity. I love the success. I love the rejection. I could never do anything but what I do.
Now having said all that, we as sales managers have to make that experience fun. The way you do that is by mixing it up. It's what I call having discretionary or slush-fund dollars that are above and beyond the regular compensation program where you can have all kinds of fun things going on for your salespeople. In fact, I've got a special report that I've written. It's called "How to Create a Year's Worth of Win-Win Sales Contests for Your Salespeople." If you want that report just send me an email at warren@totalselling.com.
I'll give you one quick example. When I was an active sales manager, I would always have a contest where my goal was to have the company buy everybody their Thanksgiving meal. You might think, "Oh, come on, Warren. How much does a Thanksgiving meal cost? These people aren't going to respond to a contest like that." But it was incredible to me how much action and how much leverage I got out of a silly contest like that. Why? Because it was fun and people loved doing it. So I would say something like, "If you call a prospect whose company name begins with the letter 'K' in the next 36 hours I will place on your desk a can of sweet potatoes." By the first day people were looking around and saying, "How come you didn't get your sweet potatoes?" I'd have every salesperson call a prospect with the letter "K" and their reward was a can of sweet potatoes. I'd say, "OK, anybody who gets an appointment with a prospect in this particular industry within the next three days, I'm buying your holiday pie." The first person would get his pie, and the second person would get his pie. Of course it was a month-long contest; they didn't get a pie; they got a gift certificate. Pretty soon people were saying, "Hey, you didn't get your pie yet? How come you haven't made that appointment?"
You can see that I got everybody to win, and I made it so easy and so simple that even the most experienced or the newest salesperson would eventually have their Thanksgiving dinner paid for by me. Imagine when they all sat around at their table thinking, "The company bought the sweet potatoes. They bought the marshmallows. They bought the beets. They bought the cranberry sauce. They bought the pie, the turkey, the trimmings. They got the flowers." Every single thing you could imagine I paid for by allowing my salespeople to participate in a really fun light-hearted contest. That's the third F: having Fun.
You're going to think the fourth F is a complete contradiction of everything I've said so far. The fourth F is called Flexible. I know what you're thinking. "Now wait a minute, Warren. First you said Fair. Then you said Firm. Then you said Fun. A lot of people aren't happy because you change the rules. You changed the plan. You have feet of clay." I agree. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Having said all that, think about the beautiful oak tree in your back yard. If it weren't flexible, if it stood there in the breeze like a stone, if a gigantic breeze came by, what would happen to that tree? It would fall right over.
[Recording difficulty]
You have to have some level of flexibility within your structure. If your policy states that a particular order has to be a certain way or it's not an order, and somebody comes in with an order that looks like an order but it's only 95% of the way there, sometimes you have to trust your salespeople and rely on their good character and allow them to be flexible within the structure. A lot of this happens when you've got your salespeople out working with a customer base. They know what's happening. They're a lot closer to the action than you are, and sometimes you just have to go with that flow.
Those are the Four F's. We've got Fair, Firm, Fun, and Flexible. As sales managers, if we practice those things on a regular basis we will be able to lead our salespeople to tremendous success.
 |
|
| Warren's Favorite's |
Customer Care
What's the best way to take care of our customers? I conducted a survey in 1991, again in 1994, and again in 1997....
|
Obligating Questions as a Selling Advantage
Ask an obligating question and then be silent, but not because you're trying to create a win/lose situation. What...
|
Unlearning
We sometimes have to unlearn to become a better salesperson. Not learn, but unlearn. Think about that. Think...
|
Keeping Score
Keeping score in selling is as important as keeping score in a baseball game. Knowing what statistics to measure...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I
provide these valuable resources free of
charge for you to train your sales staff. However,
there are some restrictions on the use of
materials found on this site. Please see my Use Policy.
If you have questions or comments, please
contact me. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
– Warren
Wechsler |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
