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| Sales Management Information |
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How to Maximize Account Penetration and Jump-Start Sales
Maximizing account penetration is one of the most critical functions in sales. Why? The depth of account penetration has an enormous impact on revenues and profitability. Think about it if every one of your company's salespeople sold every product and service in their portfolio to every business unit, department, and division of every account, what kind of number would they produce? Something huge, right? From a sales management perspective, few things are more frustrating than having a bunch of "one trick ponies" on a sales team. These are salespeople that have developed a comfort level with one product or service, and that product or service makes up 80% to 100% of their sales. I used to work for a computer distributor that had numerous salespeople that fit this mold. They would congratulate themselves for selling servers to an account, completely oblivious to the fact that the very same account was also buying storage, networking equipment, software, and professional services. The distributor's salespeople only scratched the surface of the total available opportunity in most accounts. Here is a second huge frustration for sales managers and executives -- salespeople that don't produce "traction" with new products and services. When your company introduces a new product or service, you make a pretty sizeable investment to train your salespeople to sell the new product or service, right? Doesn't it drive you crazy when only a fraction of your salespeople actually sell the new product or service? The return on your sales training investment stinks, and your company never sees the revenue boost it expected to receive from the new product or service. Why do I bring up lack of account penetration and lack of sales traction for new products and services in the same article? Because the same problem is often at the root of both issues! That problem is an excessive focus on technical details. Many managers and salespeople believe that salespeople need to become experts in order to sell a product or service effectively. To develop this understanding, companies invest enormous amounts of time and money in exhaustive training to educate salespeople on product features and benefits, performance characteristics, industry information, pricing guidelines, promotional activities, available collateral material, etc. Unfortunately, when salespeople leave these training sessions, they often have no idea how to find or qualify opportunities for the product or service they were just "trained" to sell! This leaves the salespeople frustrated, as they feel the time spent in training was wasted. Management is equally frustrated with their sales team's inability to gain traction with new products and services, and their inability to learn to sell their company's entire portfolio of products and services. This mutual frustration results from a lack of recognition of one very important fact: When a salesperson identifies a qualified opportunity, there is usually no shortage of knowledgeable resources that can assist the salesperson with converting the opportunity into a sale. These resources may include technical or other specialists from the salesperson's own company, or similar resources that are employed by suppliers or channel partners. If salespeople have access to product/service experts, why should they spend time learning technical details? Instead, why don't they laser-focus their learning on how to find and qualify opportunities? Your company can facilitate this kind of focused learning by redesigning product and service training curriculums to address the following topics:
Copyright 2005 -- Alan Rigg Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: Why Most Salespeople Don't Perform and What to Do About It. To learn more about his book and sign up for more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020performance.com.
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Careers and Employment 6 Common Mistakes in the Sales Hiring Process Is lack of sales results, more sales training costs, months of unearned salary and damage to your company's image or reputation your company's method of NOT finding good salespeople? For most companies it is! How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Performance -- Part 2 Another key reason why companies suffer from 80/20 performance is their processes for hiring, training and managing salespeople rely almost entirely upon subjective information. Think about it: What are resumes? They are an individual's subjective portrayal of their capabilities and experiences. The Hidden Competition: Avoiding the 2 Most Common Competitors There are really only two types of competitor: Snuff Out the Competition Without Leaving a Mark! Does the competition drive you crazy? Are they relentless about taking your clients away? Are customer loyalties becoming a thing of the past? Investing in Your Sales Team While there's no easy answer to this question, there are a few basic points, known as the Training Discrepancy Model, which illustrate key areas that must be targeted for your company's training investment to be 100% effective. 100% Commission Equals Zero Percent Control The temptation to use straight (100%) commission plans never goes away: "Let's put our salespeople on 100 percent commission. Then, if they don't perform, we're not out any money." For small, start-up organizations, the lure is irresistible, especially when money is tight and the company or the products they sell have no track record in the market. The Boss from Hell: Quick to Criticize, Slow to Praise So you have a boss who dumps all over you the moment things go wrong, but never seems to notice when things go right. Ouch. Is Your Sales Trust Factor High Enough to Win Against the Competition? How high is your sales trust factor? Not Enough Fresh Sales Leads? Marketing is the New Sales Your sales are down and leads are rare. The phone's not ringing. Let's blame marketing! Whats a Professional Sales Manager? I was in the depths of a major depression. As a third year salesperson with a good company, I was doing well, and was on my way to becoming the top salesperson in the nation for that company. But business had slowed down a little, and I did not have my usual number of proposals out for consideration. So, I wasn't as busy as usual. As my activity slowed, I began to worry. My doubts increased to the point where I had thought myself into a real depression, stuck on the question of "What's the use of trying?" The more negative my thoughts became, the less energy I had. My lack of energy led to fewer and fewer sales calls, which of course, led to less activity. And that led to more depressing thoughts. I was caught in a powerful downward spiral. How Do I Manage Workplace Conflict? Workplace Conflict Generous Donor Refused (how qualified business slipped away) Generous Donor Refused It's Time For A Sales Management Revolution Are you dog tired because of the way you manage your sales team? Many managers tell me that they cannot see a way out of traditional sales management methods that keep them working like dogs, including focusing strictly on revenue goals, staying late, traveling up to three weeks a month, tightly controlling teams, and constantly reacting to emergencies. There has to be a better way. The Differences Between A Commercial Collections Agency & Lawyer If your letter writing and phone calls have all failed to resolve a debt issue, it is time to call in a professional - a commercial collection agency or a lawyer specializing in commercial debt collection. Online Sales: Secret To Increase Your Sales By Bundling Your Products Microsoft has used this online sales secret to become a giant, and the greatest software company in the world. Sales Competence Isn't About Quota Performance! Compounding the problem are two myths regarding measures of competency in sales. Increase Retail Sales With Meetups I recently attended the monthly Italian language Meetup here in Little Rock. Meetups are informal social gatherings of people with similar interests in a particular topic. Topics for Meetups range from political to cultural to intellectual to fun. Beyond the Golden Rule There are several types and sub types of people in the world. Getting to understand the differences will help you connect with other people. This is taught in sales 101, because the need to connect with the people to make the sale. Franchise Sales; Recruiting of Laid Off Employees Because of corporate downsizing, many people have been laid-off or voluntarily taken early retirement packages and/or incentives. This happens when times are good due to mergers and acquisitions or when the economy is in the dumps and corporations are working to cut payroll costs. Almost all of these people have absolutely had it with corporate life; they feel burned and unappreciated. They realize that there is no such thing as job security. If a franchiser sales team gets the lead in time, they may still have good credit. If not, these laid off employees will have spent their savings on family crisis type emergencies and day-to-day living expenses. They will have either taken a job for less pay somewhere else out of necessity or be in a line of work totally foreign or unrewarding. Once this happens, they may no longer be in the market for a franchise. Make Time, Not Excuses There are four primary activities that successful salespeople engage in on an ongoing basis. These are Prospecting (45% of time), Presenting (20%), Product Knowledge/Malleability (20%), and Professional and Personal Development (15%)
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