In my last article, we looked at the all too common disconnect between sales team behavior and the expectations of corporate leadership. This time, we'll look at how to attract a quality sales team in the first place and equally important - motivating and retaining them.

The knee-jerk answer regarding how to attract sales talent is "offer them a bucketful of money". While this is in part true, it falls far short of a complete answer. It must be emphasized, that a well constructed compensation plan will go a long way towards attracting energetic sales people. Clearly, money is a motivator, but as we all lean either formally or via trial and error, money is not a satisfier. We'll dive more specifically into the elements of a good sales compensation plan in a future article.

Let's focus on some other elements of attracting high powered sales teams - and there can be lots of them. For example, many sales people would prefer to sell products/services with panache or sizzle rather than say ball bearings. That's somewhat understandable; however, there can also be gold in selling those ball bearings!

It's worth a few moments to consider the overall makeup of a typical sales person. What kind of person chooses sales as a career? First and foremost they must be egocentric. Detractors would say that sales people have big egos and they would be correct for the most part. You have to have confidence in order to be in sales. Let's face it, sales people go around all day and have 'NO' said to them. It takes a thick skin and self-confidence to deal with that. Most people avoid sales for this very reason. Incidentally, selling is an art and starts when a customer says no. If the customer does not say 'No' initially, then you are just an order taker.

Sales people are outgoing, no shrinking violets here. They usually covet material things. They tend to be driven by a burning desire to succeed - both monetarily and in their careers. Those big egos need to be fed often also - they love recognition. It's your job to figure out how to feed and nurture these egos. They are also competitive. This can work to your advantage in terms of creatively offering incentives that they will strive to achieve on a competitive basis with their sales peers. There is more, but this is sufficient for our purposes here.

Next, it's a question of properly understanding what motivates sales people and mapping that against your solution portfolio. Charting which characteristics and drivers of sales behavior touch on which aspects of your product/service offers will give you a big leg up on constructing a role profile and recruiting profile that will attract the kind of sales team you need.

So let's assume you've done your homework and now have a dynamite role profile and recruiting profile and that you have a great compensation plan (again, subject of a future article), and have hired a great team of
'A' players that maps well to your products/services and markets. The next conundrum is how to motivate and retain that team.

Retention is a made up of a myriad of factors including a great compensation plan, enlightened leadership (another article topic), cultural/environmental factors in the office, etc. Although important in many instances, they are outside the scope of this article. Specifically, I'd like to focus on training, career path, and sales tools.

Unlike other types of positions, all too often managers myopically hire an individual in a sales role never thinking beyond the role that sales person will perform in meeting current and future sales targets. Indeed, in many cases, sales leaders jealously guard their best sales people against considering other options. More than once I've seen sales leaders sabotage these efforts. Just like any other employee, a sales person wants to understand their growth path in the company (sales management, marketing, operations, customer service, etc.) and what milestones that individual must meet to be considered for other positions within the company.

It is incumbent upon corporate leadership to work with organizations (if present) such as Human Resources, Corporate Education Departments, etc., to determine a career path for each sales person and the training associated with broadening and deepening their talents and growth opportunities. Each individual sales person should be handed a career roadmap containing options, milestones, and time frames. Indeed, sophisticated companies provide education curriculum by role profile. Everyone in the chain of command should understand exactly what is required for an individual to rise from Sales Representative 1 to Sales Representative 2, etc.

Curriculum/training for sales people is not only about feature/function/benefit of portfolio offers, but also selling/consultative skills, sales leadership, marketing positioning & segmentation, competitive analysis and competitive knock-off, customer demographics and satisfaction, etc.

Companies routinely talk the talk that "people are our strongest asset".
Taking steps like I've described here help companies walk that talk. Programs like these retain people even in any lean compensation years.

Having the right sales tools in support of the sales effort is critical to sales success and the overall satisfaction and retention of the sales force. This goes way beyond a sales bag full of samples. It is also more than providing them with a PC and company logo coffee cup. Much of having the right tools for a sales team involves the company Marketing Department. In an oversimplified sense, sales people execute the sales story, customer profiling, competitive, segmentation, pricing, and service offer portfolio determined in advance by Marketing. I do not believe it too much of stretch to say that the better the Marketing department does its job, the higher the correlation with meeting company sales goals. As a side note, in spite of the power of my previous statement, it is amazing how often the Marketing team is first in line to suffer cutbacks during lean times.

In the end, the formula is fairly simple if you follow this credo in building and retaining an effective sales force:

• Find the right people
• Give them the training they need to succeed
• Give them the tools they need to be successful
• And finally, get the hell out of their way

Ah, you noticed the last bullet! You've just hired the best sales team possible; you've done your homework to provide them with the best tools and training possible. Now it's time to turn them loose to deliver like you have planned and worked so hard for. All too often, sales people are burdened with incredible unrealistic quotas, micromanaging first line sales managers, over-burdening 'administrivia' (activity reporting, call planning, weekly reports), etc. Small businesses usually hire experienced people as only the largest companies can invest in incubator training programs often spanning many years for new sales people. Since you are likely hiring professionals, treat them like one. Unlike staff positions, it's easy to judge sales performance - either they are hitting their targets over time or they are not. Many control-crazed small business owners sweating their P&L's will place undue administrative reporting burden and pressure on sales teams. As a rule, an effective sales team spends less than 20% of its time (15% is a better goal) on administrative exercises at the opportunity cost of selling face time with customers. Get out of the way of the success of your sales team. If you have done your upfront work correctly in recruiting, training, and arming your sales force, the results will come without your micromanagement. You will also have created an environment and culture that will go a long way towards retaining that self-same winning sales team.

By Mark Francischetti
VP Marketing & Business Development

http://www.CxoToGo.com
937-272-6868 cell
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