Or else...
Why do most sales people hate to write anything down - especially when it comes to keeping track of prospect and customer communications?
You see this all the time with contact manager and CRM systems. Sales Ops puts them in place and sales summarily ignores them.
With so many client projects happening at once, that doesn't work for me. Think of me as the VP of Sales over a set of Sales Manager that then have teams of their own. But I have multiple bosses myself - clients who often percolate up to me and I need to talk about a particular prospect or opportunity with them. If I can't see complete history in the CRM (SalesForce.com in our instance), then we look really really bad.
I guess I've always believed in tools like this mostly because my memory is so crappy. While I rarely 'own' an account these days, when I did a lot of that, I wasn't the type who knew exactly what every conversation was, what next steps were agreed, and what progress was being made against them. So I personally saw CRM tools as a way to be my memory, and I got way better at selling because of them. I threw my notebooks away - because I could never find anything in them anyways.
Also, we move people around on projects as requirements and the necessary skill sets change on a client project, as they always do. So if we don't have history recorded, that transition is difficult. The same thing may happen in your business when you go to move territories around, for example. Or people leave.
I make the point that no individual 'owns' the account, so they can't just do as they please. Part of how people are judged here is their ability to communicate a conversation within the CRM system, show clear next steps, and maintain accurate opportunity pipeline information.
My simple rule is that if it isn't documented (or documented poorly), it didn't happen or doesn't exist. If you tell me about a great meeting or a great opportunity, I better be able to go to SFDC and see everything you are talking about!
My opinion is that the adoption of the practice of documentation ALWAYS starts at the top. If the sales management is not constantly challenging the team to perform to expectations in this area, the initiative will die. I understand that I was outside the norm for a sales person and most would rather lick their shoe than have to write stuff down. But if the management isn't constantly vigilent about this issue, change will never happen...I've seen it many times.
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3 comments:
Greg,
I have encountered a very dynamic situation and am very interested in getting some much needed advice
So, what do you do when… Consider this a case study…?
Being a the newly hired VP of sales at his company, George McFarland was tasked with the role of bringing structure, teamwork, and most importantly, and increase in sales for his company, The United Glass Company.
The company was small given they contracted out a majority of their work and George was the leader of a 5 man and 1 woman sales team. George made a conscious effort at the beginning to meet with each person on his team. He went to lunch with each of them, got to understand to their personal lives, whether they were married, had children, life dreams and much more information.
He thereafter implemented a weekly sales meeting to bring the entire team together. Funny enough, the sales team to date had not been having any internal meetings whatsoever. They had no quotas, call requirements, pipeline, nothing. Getting past the first initial meeting, during the second George started it by posing a simple question: What did you do this week? What did you learn? What can you share with the rest of the team?
Everyone had normal predictable answers around the calls they made, getting shot down by administrative assistants, and what they plan on doing differently next week.
The second more provocative question, but still fairly predictable given the knowledge George had gained about his team, he asked: What are you excellent at today, and what would you like to gain as a sales person during your time here?
The answers were all very similar. Everyone was unsurprisingly good at generating new opportunities, getting conversations going, and wanting to gain more skills finding pain, and creating value to help advance the sales cycle.
BUT, one very determined, head strong, arrogant salesman in the room proudly stated to George and the entire sales team, “I need help understanding the objections my prospects are going to throw at me”.
George stated, “How can we, your team, help you better understand these objections?”
“Well you can’t, I just need to hear them from the prospects for myself.”
“Ok,” George said. Trying to move on he went the other half of the question, “What are you looking to gain during your time hear at the Glass Company?”
The salesman paused for a moment and thought about it. He proudly stated, “You can all have a positive attitude. If there is a lot of buzz and things going on around here, it will motivate me and help me have the right mindset.”
“Is there anything else we as your colleges can do to help you, is there anything you want to take away from your time here?” George asked again.
“Now that I think of it, if everyone comes to me and asks me questions and comes to me for help, that will better me as a salesman.”
George shortly ended the meeting after that wanting the rest of the team to think over the conversation they had just witnessed.
As the VP of Sales for this small Glass Company, what do you do? How do you manage this person to be a team player? Do you keep him, let him go…?
Best,
Robert Johnson
That was a lot of commentary, but I think the ultimate question you asked was how do you make a self-centered salesperson become a team player, and if he doesn't should that be grounds for removing him?
My first glib response to that is always that I will put up with a lot for someone who is a real producer. As with celebrities, a certain amount of arrogance and self-centered behavior sometimes comes with a good producer! But that is disruptive to both the team and to the manager - so it can only go so far. Suffice to say I'm much less tolerant if they exhibit that trait AND they can't sell a damn thing. Chances are they are pissing off prospects just as much as they irritate internally. That type of person I will find out how to jettison.
For an individual contributor sales person, a response around how others should act to enable his state of mind is an invalid request, in my opinion.
His quota is his and his only, and his responsibility to achieve regardless of his perceived work environment. He can't put the mood or actions of others into the 'responsibility line' of that quota.
During a particularly diffucult relationship time for me a long while back I went to a counselor that said something to me that has always stuck with me in both relationships and business - he said "Greg - you can ONLY change your behavior and frame of mind and how you react and interact with others. You have NO control over making others change - and shouldn't ever expect that you can." That has made life easier - I no longer try to change others, that is pushing crap up hill, I can just choose how I deal with whatever the situation is.
If you believe that philosophy, George should counsel his salessperson that even if everyone is a complete moper, he alone controls not letting that get to him.
On the final piece - him wanting everyone to come to him - well, if that truly happened, he would spend time on stuff that doesn't contribute to him personally acheiving his quota and he would probably lose his job over it. That George can put to the employee quite bluntly.
I couldn't agree more. There is not telling how much valuable information I have lost. Like your blog, hope you post soon...
-Will Fultz
www.willfultz.blogspot.com
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