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February 2018
Hanging My Shingle: Starting My Own Business By Scott Yelle As many of you know, last year I decided to leave the corporate world and hang out my own shingle as an entrepreneur. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for some time now, and I am thrilled with my decision! For this newsletter, I want to take some time to reflect and say thanks. I truly feel I have a blessed life, and many of you have contributed to that. I want to start by thanking my employers over the last 25 years! I’ve worked for some outstanding companies that provided me numerous opportunities to grow and learn. But it is really the people I encountered along the way that made the journey so amazing! I have been very fortunate to have worked alongside many great individuals. I am thankful for them because they challenged me to grow – both personally and professionally. They were open to my coaching and ideas to help them improve, and without them, many of the opportunities I have had over the course of my career would not have been possible. I am the leader I am today because of those people and the interactions we had! Thank you. I have joined the perfect company, Sales Xceleration, which has proven there is a need for the services I provide – in any industry. We provide turnkey selling solutions for small to mid-size businesses that want to launch or expand their sales operations, while delivering predictable and sustainable sales performance improvement. I have used these solutions to help current clients and want to help more small businesses. I now have a team of resources to help and support me on this adventure called entrepreneurship! It’s a great fit for me and I am thankful! Here is the type of client I work with: -Companies experiencing stagnant or declining sales -Companies that want to take their sales organization to the next level -Companies with owners wearing "multiple hats," who need to dellegate out sales leadership and responsibility -Companies with owners who realize they lack the experience to manage the sales team as their company grows I also want to thank my family for supporting me through this change. As you can imagine, it’s a big decision and affects all of us! Scary and exciting – all at the same time! I am blessed to have them by my side with their support! Again, thank you to so many who have helped me along the way. I do appreciate the referrals and everyone's support! If we haven’t spoken recently, check out my website, or give me a call at 860-573-8782, and let’s chat! ________________________________________________________
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Do Your Sales Reps Perform Like an Olympic Athlete?
The winter Olympics began last week, and I must confess that I prefer the winter events over the summer ones. I am always excited to watch the speed involved with the downhill skiing, the bobsledding and the speed skaters. I love to watch the teamwork of ice hockey and the pair’s figure skating. I am ever amazed at the drive and determination of the Nordic and Biathlon skiers. I marvel at the risk taking of the ski jumpers and the freestyle events, and I am fascinated with the strategy of curling! As I was watching the events on television the other night, it occurred to me that a great salesperson possesses many of the same qualities of an Olympic Athlete! Speed, determination, teamwork, drive, risk taking and strategy! Which led me to the question … Are your sales reps ready to compete in the Olympics of Selling? Assess Your Team – Be the Olympic Coach In order to assess your team, you need to conduct routine reviews of your sales force. This can come in many forms: 1.Accompany them in the field. Days spent with your rep in the field are the best, in my opinion. You can see if your rep has prepared for their work day, how they present themselves, how they handle objections, are they asking for the business, do they follow-up, and how well do they represent the company! A well-planned day with a sales rep, watching them perform in their everyday world, is critical to their growth. It also sends a clear message that you care about them! What sales rep wouldn’t want a manager who cares about their growth both personally and professionally? 2.Routine 1-1 sessions that are not performance reviews! Schedule one-on-one time with every one of your reps on a regular cycle. It’s a chance to check in and see how they are progressing in key areas, and to provide ongoing coaching and career development advice. It creates a two-way, open dialogue that leads to a productive employee-manager relationship. When you structure these meetings to be productive for both sides, it will be one of the things your employees will look forward to the most! 3.Performance reviews. These are a quarterly or semi-annual full-blown review of your sales rep’s performance against the key metrics that you mutually agreed upon at the beginning of the year. There needs to be a performance grade applied to this review, so your team knows exactly where they stand in the eyes of the company. 4.Project assignments. Assigning projects to your sales reps allows them to grow, and it allows you to observe how they handle time management, problem solving, delegation, etc. This is a great way to develop potential future leaders for your organization. Remember, every Olympic athlete didn’t achieve their dream of competing on the Olympic stage without the guidance of great coaches along the way. Their coaches gave them honest, timely and consistent feedback on what they were doing well and where they needed to improve. Assess Your Sales Infrastructure – Is it Designed for Peak Performance for Your Sales Athletes? Building a solid sales infrastructure to support your sales team is critical for them to perform at peak levels and to bring home the Gold for your company! Key infrastructure components are: · A customized, written sales business plan and revenue plan by salesperson, by product, and by month. · A custom sales process for each sales channel. This enables business owners and their sales management team to tell at a glance where each opportunity is in the sales process, and what needs to be accomplished to move each opportunity to the next stage. · A Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) that allows you to manage the sales process for your company. · Key performance indicators (KPIs) and forecasting models to track how the sales team is doing … Are we on track to win the Gold? · A compensation plan that rewards your sales team for activities that will produce Gold Medals. If your plan doesn’t do this, then it’s time to adjust it to change the behaviors of your sales athletes. “In times of uncertainty, create structure” – Sir Ernest Shackleton, Explorer
Is your business in an uncertain spot? Are you not sure what to do to jumpstart sales growth? Follow the words of Mr. Shackleton. His story of leadership is an amazing one. He kept his crew alive in the early 1900’s for over a year when his ship become stuck in the ice in Antarctica. An amazing feat for that period! One of the keys to his success was creating structure that every member of his team could follow day in and day out. This structure allowed them to focus on the task at hand versus getting caught up on their situation. The team trusted the process and that led them to survival. Do you have the structure you need to thrive? Every highly productive sales force, whether your company is big or small, has an infrastructure and proven process’ in place that allows the team to thrive and produce results every year. That structure helps remove some of the variables that come from running a business. That structure allows you and your management team to effectively lead your team to execute at an elevated level. Start with the basics: Building a solid sales infrastructure to support the sales team and sales management is of the utmost importance for increased and sustainable revenue growth, specifically: • Developing a customized, written sales business plan and revenue plan by salesperson, by product, and by month; • Implementing a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM); • Developing a custom sales process for each product line and programming it into the CRM. This enables the business owners and sales management to tell at a glance which stage in the sales process each opportunity is in and what needs to be accomplished in order to move each opportunity to the next stage; • Developing key performance indicators (KPIs), forecasting models to track how the sales team is doing; and • Defining the structure and content for productive weekly sales meetings. Bottom Line: At New England Sales Solutions powered by Sales Xceleration, we know that any sales and business growth comes with structure. Without that sales structure as a foundation, your organization will struggle to produce consistent results. When we are called in to assist a business, we work with you side by side to build that solid, time tested, results proven structure to grow. Regardless of when we enter the situation as your advisor, we help you manage the uncertainties associated with sales and build a foundation that will help you to thrive for years to come. |
Author:Scott Yelle, Founder of NE Sales Solutions Archives
December 2019
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