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Sales Management: Managing Activities vs. Results

By
Education & Training with BuilderRadio.com

This week we speak with John Underwood, author of Scratch Selling: 18 Lessons Golf will Teach you about Sales.

For 25 years John Underwood has been helping sales organizations to increase their productivity by teaching them to measure and manage activities rather than results. Manage these activities, says Underwood, and the results will take care of themselves.

We asked John what he saw as the biggest management lessons he’s learned that he could share with us, and what steps we should take to increase sales productivity from a management perspective.  Listen to the audio to hear his answer, or continue reading our  notes from the conversation

The Problem with Sales Managers…

“One of the unfortunate downsides of the sales realm is that most sales managers rise to their position from out of the sales ranks, but are usually given very little additional training.  To exacerbate this situation even more, most of these individuals were very productive sales people.

We first have to realize that sales and sales management are two distinctly different disciplines with uniquely different job descriptions.

There is a huge difference between knowing how to do something (such as selling) and teaching someone else to do it.  One cannot assume that because you know how to do one, you automatically know how to do the other. The truth is most sales professionals are by nature good at what they do, and most really don’t have a system that they can teach someone else… They just do it.

I see the overwhelming evidence in the fact that the very largest percentage of sales managers spend very little of their time actually “training” sales people, or even managing sales people.  Instead, their time is spent being more like business managers, and handling the deals that are already in the pipeline.  It isn’t that sales managers don’t wantto train their sales people, it’s a lack of sales management training and resources. That is precisely why resources such as BuilderRadio, if fully exploited, can have a huge impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of not only salespeople but also sales managers.

The Role of the Sales Manager

Let’s start with the title ‘sales manager.’ Therein lies at least a part of the problem.  Sales is all about converting prospects into buyers. We know this because we measure the effectiveness of a sales person by how many of these conversions take place.

The term ‘manager’, on the other hand, implies intervention.  So the primary focus of a sales manager to has to be to make sure that a process is in place that will ensure that as many prospects as possible are being converted into buyers.  He or she must intervene when that process becomes derailed for whatever reason or the results of the entire sales team will be compromised.

There lies the second issue. The truth is one cannot manage results; one can only manage those activities that LEAD to a specific, and hopefully desired, result.

Results are historical in nature. They are the outcome.  To focus on the outcome is like focusing on the score in any given sport. If you want to improve, you have to focus on what affects the score, not the score itself. In other words, concentrate on playing the game, not what the outcome should be.

I’m not suggesting that whatever else a sales manager does is not important.  In fact, it may be critical.  But if it does not pertain to the conversion of prospects to buyers and it is not pertaining to sales activities, then it does not technically fall under the ‘sales management’ title… It might be business manager, transaction manager, but not ‘sales’ manager.

By definition, sales activities are those activities that, if executed on an efficient, effective and consistent basis, will lead to sales productivity.  For example, sales activities may include cold calling, filtering and sorting prospects, attending community events such as chamber meetings, farming for referrals, doing a letter or e-mail campaign, etc. All of these are “sales activities”.

One also has to pay attention to core competencies and skill sets that an individual must have in order to be reasonably ensured of success.  Core competencies may include interviewing a prospect, identifying critical issues, developing a budget for a client, offering a compelling product presentation, obtaining a commitment, etc. An effective manager has to know how confident his or her staff is in each competency.

Most sales managers know what their sales people need to do, but there is an enormous difference between knowing what your sales people need to be doing and actually defining, teaching and managing what they need to be doing.

Consider a sports analogy: Let’s assume that you wanted to be a better golfer and so you decided to employ the services of a PGA Teaching professional.  You wanted to decrease your score by, let’s say, 8 strokes and go from shooting in the high 80s and shooting in the high 70s.

The Golf Pro can watch you hit a few balls, talk with you for a while, look at some of your scorecards and be able to tell what need to do to decrease your score by 8 strokes.

But, does his knowledge lower your score?  Would you be happy if he just said, “Well, you need to control your direction and your distance better and that will lower your score by at least 8 strokes… you just need to play better?”  Of course not!

So what’s the difference between a PGA Teaching Pro and a Sales Manager?

Most ales managers have a general understanding of what their sales team needs to be doing and they have a general sense of how well they’re actually doing.  But when it comes down to knowing what each of their sales people needs to improve on to increase their specific results, most don’t know specifically needs to be done.

Here are five questions sales managers need to ask themselves:

  1. Do you have a specific, documented sales process that you teachand review, and practice, on a regular basis?
  2. Do you have a specific set of sales activities that your sales team is expected to complete in a consistent manner?
  3. Do you MEASURE the frequency of how these activities are completed and then determine the effectiveness and the efficiency with which each are being conducted?
  4. Do you have a set of core competencies that each member of your sales team is taught?
  5. Do you review with your sales people activity performance (not their results) on a regular basis and collectively put a plan of action into place?

The facts are that less than 5% of all sales managers are able to answer all 5 of those questions with an emphatic YES.  YET, when we go to a Golf Professional, that is EXACTLY what we would expect and we would believe that any Pro who does not meet these criteria would not worth the investment of $50-150 + per hour.

In, Scratch Selling: 18 Lessons Golf will Teach you about Sales, I outline 3 things that all those who have ever been consistently great at anything have in common:

  1. They have a PROCESS
  2. They are COMMITTED to their process
  3. They are STUDENTS of their process… that is that they continually measure, evaluate and adjust their game.

Any manager, just like the Golf Professional, has to ensure that all three of these elements exist in their organization.

An effective manager needs to do the following IF they are to truly develop a sales team:

  1. Stop focusing on results… focus on what creates results.
  2. Identify a sales process that your people believe will work and produce income.
  3. Ensure that each member of your sales team is intimately familiar with that process. Teach, review and practice that process.
  4. Identify the top 15 Core Competencies that every member of your team needs to be proficient in. Ensure their proficiency.
  5. Identify at least 20 Sales activities that each member must complete in a consistent manner. Create Benchmarks to determine the outcome.
  6. Hold your people accountable… they need your guidance.
  7. Don’t assume that they know or that they will do what you expect them to do… People don’t do what you expect, they do what you accept.

Just like a Golf Professional can help you shave strokes off of your game, you can help your sales team members capture additional sales… so long as you are committed to doing just that.

Link to audio interview: http://builderradio.com/blog/?p=1245

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Contact John Underwood at www.SellingEdgePro.com

Order John’s book, Scratch Selling: 18 Lessons Golf will Teach you about Sales here.

Comments (1)

Cherry Wings Realty
Cherry Wings Realty - Traverse City, MI
Your Traverse City Michigan Realtor

Jerry:

Great points.  Training is probably one the most improtant tasks that any sales manager has and yet very few of them do it effectively. 

That is what I love most about my Broker/Manager and Exit Realty, we are constantly given the latest and most up to date training on what is new and working in our industry.

Feb 07, 2010 11:06 PM