A recent report from Accenture shows Canadian sales performance is slipping year over year. And salespeople are not missing their numbers because of the economic climate, pricing or the fact your marketing team hasn't updated your brochure or your website since Thanksgiving. There's a lack of discipline and commitment to sales execution, and it's holding both individuals and organizations back.
So how is 2015 shaping up?
With the understanding that you can't change everything at once, let's look at four core elements: strategy, process, accountability and metrics. They apply to all levels of the sales organization and ignoring any one of the elements is a mistake.
1. Strategy: Although many salespeople may know their goals, few have a clear plan for achieving them. Strategy is defined as a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim. A lack of of strategy can hurt at the top of the sales organization, it can also cripple it at street level. Buyers often gravitate to a seller who can articulate their strategy and align it with the buyer's strategy, leading to a relationship that can withstand price and other competitive elements..
2. Process: Without a strategy, it's almost impossible to create a roadmap to success. You don't know why you're winning (or losing deals) and therefore you can't improve. Front-line managers who rely on subjective elements, rather than objective standards for coaching and evolving their teams, have to work harder to realize less incremental gain in performance and results.
This lack of process costs money – not just in lost sales, but in the company overall. It can also directly impact client loyalty, reduce a rep's success in winning accounts, but more importantly in maintaining and growing existing accounts.
3. Accountability: While everyone in sales speaks to accountability they often forget that it's a two-way street. Reps need to be accountable to their clients as much as their employers, but sales leaders must be accountable for their people's success. Based on the statistic mentioned above, that most sales people will not hit their quota, it's apparent that in Canada there's a lack of accountability.
4. Metrics: With the amount of data available, I'm surprised how few leaders and sales reps take advantage of it. If reps do not "own their numbers," how are they to execute? Many reps know their favourite athlete's stats and have no clue about their own; one is the basis of a five dollar bet, the other their success and that of their employer. Without metrics, it is difficult to plan, know where you are in the process, be accountable and execute.
And in sales, it is all about execution, everything else is just talk.
Tibor Shanto is a principal at Renbor Sales Solutions Inc., and he will be a presenter at the Toronto Sales Performance Summit. His column appears once a month on the Report on Small Business website.
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