All posts by Amit Tewari

Sales Management

How to Hit Sales Goals: Targets Reevaluate Sales Management Goals

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On average, 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail according to US News. If you’re one of those rare few who manage to accomplish their resolutions, then congratulations you understand the importance of setting manageable goals.

For the rest of us who struggle in the area of goal setting, our goal is to improve our goals. One department of growing companies that should understand the value of goal setting—perhaps more than any other department—is sales management. After all, sales teams are a large part of setting the pace of growth within an organization, and goal setting can determine the speed at which success comes.

But sometimes sales management sets goals that don’t deliver results, and this is because the goals and process to create them were flawed. When sales managers sit down to set goals, here are some questions they should ask to help form effective goals that drive growth.

Do you remember the previous goals?

Human nature is forgetful. How many times have we walked into a room only to forget why we came in there in the first place? If our brains are wired such that we forget something in less than a minute, then remembering the goals set a week before might be a challenge.

When we lose sight of our goals, we spend our energies doing ineffective activities. Furthermore, forgotten past goals create problems for future goals because whatever processes were in place during the previous goal setting could be replicated in the current session.

There are numerous tricks to conquering this natural shortcoming. While there is no one right answer for every individual, here are a couple tricks you can utilize to outsmart your own brain.

  1. Use visual cues to help recall sales goals e.g. if the goal is to close X number of sales, then change your computer’s wallpaper to that number.
  2. Take time each day to review your goals. Even just five minutes of briefly scanning the goals can orient your brain to focus on achieving them for the rest of the day.
  3. Place reminders of your goals in spots you frequently visit, like the fridge in the break room.
  4. If you’re feeling especially creative, you can create rhymes or little songs out of your goals. (You may laugh, but I still remember my home phone number from when I was 7 years-old because of this.)

These are just a few tricks to help with remembering goals. Work with your own brain, are you more visual, audio, or kinetic? Whatever method you use, the important takeaway is that it’s worth taking the time to remember sales goals.

Do the sales reps know the goals?

This may seem like a repeat of the last question but thinking of how sales reps will remember the goals requires a different focus. Chances are if sales management is the goal setter, then sales management may be the only group that remembers the goals.

It is perhaps even more dangerous when sales reps forget the sales goals, then when sales management forgets. The reason is because sales reps are the ones who put in the effort to accomplish the goals. While sales management is busy prepping for meetings with the c-suite, compiling forecast data for the board of directors and training sales teams, their time spent making calls, engaging with potential customers, and closing deals is limited.

Constantly orienting sales teams towards goals is a valuable exercise to do daily. Having sales reps take five minutes when they first come in to re-familiarize themselves with the goals will result in hours of more productive activities.

Are the goals in line with the overall company strategy?

As a sales manager, the company’s growth and revenue rests heavily on your shoulders.

No pressure, right?

But sales is only a part of the whole company and it needs to work with multiple other departments in order to succeed. This is why understanding the overall company strategy is important. It is there to guide every aspect of the company on a broad and general scale. It tells sales management what the direction of the company is, why the company is going in that direction, how to get started on that path, and what resources are available.

Just like it’s worth taking a quick look at goals each day, it’s also valuable to remind oneself of the company strategy. The nice part of having a company strategy is that when sales management sits down to set goals, there is already an established foundation for getting started. Also, if you face a mental block, then the company strategy can provide inspiration.

What is the nature of the goals?

Not all goals are equal. The inequality among goals is due in large part to the nature of the goal. Take a moment to look at some classic New Year’s resolutions. According to a poll by YouGov, the most common resolutions of 2018 were:

  • Eat healthier
  • Get more exercise
  • Save (more) money

After seeing goals like these, it is understandable why New Year’s resolutions have such a low success rate. Why? It’s because the nature of these goals is a setup for inevitable failure! They are ambiguous, lack any standard for achievement, and show little desire to commit.

Instead, we want goals that avoid vague results. Ask yourself, what is the objective standard for the success of a goal? Setting a standard improves the chances of success significantly. Let’s take the example of eating healthier. A standard we could apply to this would be, “I will keep my daily calorie consumption below 2,200.”

When setting goals, change the nature of goals from subjective to objective. By setting a clear standard there is a distinct threshold of success and this gives a target for sales management and reps to strive for.

How ambitious are the goals?

Ambition is a fantastic trait to possess. But too much ambition can have negative consequences. Let’s imagine a new hire joins the team and sets a goal that goes far beyond the success rate of even the best sales reps in the company. What happens when that goal is inevitably never realized? At first everything may seem fine, but overtime constant failure is disheartening and will eventually kill ambition.

Likewise, goals that are lackluster will result in passionless efforts. This in turn will also kill ambition.

Sales management needs to find the “Goldilocks zone” of goal setting; goals that are neither too hot, nor too cold. Identifying this zone is simple if goals with objective standards are set. With goals that now have objective standards, we can identify a perfect middle ground between the two extremes. Create a spectrum using the previous week’s numbers. Set a range of what goes too far and what will come up too short. Then use this spectrum to evaluate the boundaries individual sales reps will operate in.

Ambition is a desirable trait in sales reps, but like a fire, it needs constant fuel. And that fuel is success. But don’t discount the success of occasionally failing. Failing to meet goals can provide great learning opportunities to help struggling sales reps.

Was technology used in goal-setting?

Welcome to the 21st century, where everything is touched by technology. There’s no escaping it now. And the reason why new technology is constantly interjecting itself into our lives is because of the results it can produce. Organizations that implement technology into their sales operations always have a competitive edge.

What technology does is remove some of the mind-stressing work that could take hours to complete. Sales forecasting is taking the stress of goal creation and presenting all the relevant information anyone in sales management could need. Not sure if a goal is too ambitious or lackluster? Sales forecasting can show you exactly where the middle ground will be. It takes all past data and analyzes it to see what the most likely outcome for a week is.

Gut-based goal setting is rapidly losing value as a successful process. The best steps sales management can take is to implement sales technology yesterday. Simply taking the time to find a sales management software that gives insight and transparency into sales processes will transform goal-setting from subjective and gut-based to measurable and objective. Goals created with the latter traits will soon become the only method by which organizations can grow effectively.

When to reevaluate goal setting

Goals should be constantly reviewed and modified, but bad goals are symptoms of the real issue. The real problem lies in bad goal setting, and if bad processes remain in place for goal setting, then only bad goals can follow.

Bad process will never create a good product.

If you notice that your goals are proving inefficient, then it’s time to analyze the potential problems behind goal-setting. Ask the questions above and diagnose where the issue lies. Does it lie in human nature, lack of technology, or both? Whatever it is, there is always something more that can be done to improve the value of goals, and the processes in place to create them should be evaluated alongside the goals themselves.

Marketing and Sales Alignment

B2B Startup Strategies for Successful Marketing and Sales Alignment

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Sales and marketing are the peanut butter and jelly sandwich of a B2B company. The two just belong together. But there are some startups that haven’t perfected the alignment between their marketing and sales teams.

Traditionally, the role of marketing and sales is marketing provides leads, and sales follows up to close a sale. While that sounds simple, a lot of disparate systems and processes can muddy the successful transition of leads.

This creates a problem because marketing wants to hand off quality leads trusting that sales will follow up, and sales wants the confidence that the leads are worth pursuing.

To ensure the success of both marketing and sales, it’s necessary for the heads of marketing and sales to sit down and align their two departments. This means evaluating the customer journey and bringing marketing and sales processes and goals in alignment with an overall picture of what needs to happen for a sale to close.

Improve Communication Between Sales and Marketing

Communication is one of those words that sounds simple on paper but is perhaps one of the most complicated words in the dictionary. This is because nobody sees it the same way. Have you ever asked someone to do something and you thought it was communicated effectively, but they ended up doing something completely different?

This is a common occurrence in the workplace. The best thing sales and marketing can do to mitigate miscommunication between them is frequently meet and discuss processes and goals.

Align KPIs

To begin, focus on goals. When looking at goals and key performance indicators (KPIs), we need to ensure that both sales and marketing are setting standards that complement one another.

If marketing has a standard to acquire a massive amount of leads and then ship them off to sales, then this may drag sales down. This is because sales is more interested in the quality of leads rather than the quantity of leads.

Have sales and marketing sit down and discuss what makes a quality lead and set KPIs and goals that revolve around those requirements.

Have a Holistic View of the Customer Journey

The focus of both marketing and sales is the potential client. In the traditional model, marketing would be responsible for the initial engagement through activities like social media, email campaigns, or blogging. From there sales would find the individuals most interested and take over.

But now, both sales and marketing are more involved then ever before in every stage of the customer journey. Both departments will need to look at their processes. How can sales help in the initial stage? Could sales reps be engaging on social media or could they send out personalized emails?

Then how can marketing assist sales? Could marketing create specific content that will help a customer appreciate the demo stage more?

This ability to cross over and assist in different stages of the customer journey can only happen when marketing and sales are aligned, and when both bring their skills and resources to guide a customer through the entire journey from discovery to sale.

Create a Lead Movement Strategy

Too many leads get logged into a database and then never see the light of day again. This is troublesome because among the pile of dead-end leads, there are a few gems worth uncovering. But before we even begin to dig into a database of leads, we need to have a database first!

Investing in technology that helps move leads through the customer journey will be an asset to any sales and marketing team.

Once the right technology is acquired, then the next step will be using that technology to filter through the leads. From there, marketing will be able to transfer the leads worth pursuing over to sales. This means that marketing and sales will need to coordinate on two fronts.

One is the lead itself, sales will need to contribute to the identification of quality leads.

The second front to coordinate on is technology. Both sales and marketing will need proper training on how to use the platform, so everyone is in sync when using the tool.

Ask Marketing What They Need

Of course, there is more then the steps mentioned above. When sales comes to the table, it will need a supportive attitude. Let all the frustrations of bad leads go.

When sales comes to meet with marketing, they will need to listen to the needs of the marketing team. Marketing wants to provide the right leads to the sales team, but they may not know exactly what sales is looking for.

Marketing might ask for assistance in outbound email campaigns. They might ask sales teams to play a role in helping boost social media presence. Whatever the case may be, if sales is willing to support marketing, then marketing will respond in kind by assisting sales.

Ask Sales What They Need

The same goes for the marketing team. Sales will ultimately determine whether the leads become sales. Remember that a lead doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t become a sale. No company grew off leads alone.

This places the value of marketing and sales in sync with one another. If sales doesn’t have the resources to close a sale, then marketing will need to fill in what gaps it can. This might mean creating content that doesn’t generate leads but helps push customers through the sales pipeline. While this wouldn’t focus on hitting KPIs, it will prove to be more beneficial and promote a comradery between sales and marketing.

Become Educators Instead of Promoters

Sales and marketing are no longer product promoters. It’s no longer a matter of pitching to potential customers. The reason why sales shifted away from this is because frankly it doesn’t work anymore.

Nobody likes being sold to. When someone says they’ve been sold too, it implies that the customer is a passive figure who is at the whims of a charismatic sales rep. Now customers are empowered. They are active and informed like never before.

If this customer empowerment scares sales and marketing managers, then it’s because sales and marketing need to reevaluate the ways they engage with customers.

The change should be promoting to educating.

Content Creation

That change is most prominent when it comes to content creation. The reason for this is because content’s main purpose is to educate. Blogs, infographics, and videos are all examples of the kind of content that can be created.

Marketing should take the lead in this area, but sales should still be aware of the kind of content that is being created. As sales reps find good leads, they should be aware of the kind of content that drove that lead in the first place. If a sales rep knows what information a potential client finds interesting, then they can do further research and provide even more information to the individual.

This will turn sales reps into educators. No longer will they be pushing a product, but instead educating someone on the best options available to them.

Have sales reps take some time to review the company content and encourage them to keep an eye out for statistics and data that could prove useful to potential clients. Then share this information with marketing so they can turn it into content that can be shared.

This is an area where marketing and sales can align. By both sides participating in content creation, both sides can transform into educators and create effective content that can drive growth.

Social Media on Both Sides

Social media is a tool that can be utilized to engage people in an indirect manner. Normally marketing runs a startups social media presence, but this doesn’t mean sales reps can’t utilize it as well.

When sales becomes engaged with social media outreach, they can see just what kind of messaging is put out prior to customers contacting them. This can prepare them for what to say and how to interact with inbound calls from social media.

Sales reps might not be comfortable with using their personal social media profiles to reach out and interact with people. That’s entirely ok! The great part about social media is that new profiles can be made with a specific intent. These new profiles can be used to share content, engage with others, and research what is happening in the field.

But before this can happen, sales will need to work closely with marketing. Marketing is responsible for managing company social media activities. Before launching sales reps onto social media, sales should meet with marketing to make sure the twos’ strategies are aligned.

Become Influencers

The consequence of creating quality content and engaging with others on social media, is sales reps gain a reputation of being experts in the industry. This makes them “influencers.” And influencers have a much easier time selling.

However, sales reps need to fully embrace the educator mindset before this can happen. People can readily tell when something is being sold to them. Thus, to become prominent experts, some sales reps will fall into bad habits and it will ultimately hurt them.

This is because trust is something that is difficult to acquire and maintain. The moment that trust is broken it will be difficult to reclaim. But if a sales rep can let go of a selling mentality and focus instead on being an educator, then the payoff for becoming an influencer is worth aiming for.

Reliable Source of Information

The end goal of being an educator is to be a reliable source of information. Wouldn’t it be nice if sales reps and marketing never had to engage in outbound marketing? How great would it be if sales reps came back from lunch everyday to a voicemail filled with questions about your product?

That may be the dream but that is a difficult goal to achieve. It takes sales and marketing aligning themselves as educators. It takes creating the right content, finding the right statistics, and having the right mindset.

All in all, sales reps don’t want to be sales reps to potential clients. Rather they should be allies who are providing information that are here to help other companies grow. One final note is that if sales reps don’t feel like the company product or service is truly a benefit to customers, then it will be even harder to help them acquire the right mindset. Be transparent and honest, seek to educate and bless and align marketing and sales to become a reliable source of information that others can turn to.

Sales Management

5 Best Sales Pipeline Management Practices

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The term pipeline management gets thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean in practice? In short, it’s how you go about keeping your sales process running smoothly and growing predictably.

Strong pipeline management is an extremely effective way to increase your revenue as it keeps your team performing at their maximum level and allows leadership to continuously push their sales process forward. This article is a list of the five best sales pipeline management tips that every sales executive should use.

1. Fall in Love with Pipeline Metrics

Rule number one is to fall in love with the pipeline management metrics. Without a strong foundation of data, you’ll never be able to scale with any kind repeatable success. Teams that are data-centered and love letting the numbers guide them will see greater success in every role on the sales team, from sales representatives to vice presidents.

Here is a list of basic sales pipeline management metrics that should be common knowledge across your team:

  • New leads by source
  • Conversion rate of every deal stage
  • Average Closed-Won Deal Size
  • Average Sales Cycle Length by stage
  • Total # of Open Opportunities by rep

Even with just these basic pipeline metrics your sales managers will be equipped to spot deal risk and coaching areas. Your reps will always be able to understand the quality of their pipeline and forecast their performance more accurately. Lastly, your executives will be able to see the impact of sales process initiatives by having a clear baseline across all major areas.

2. Regular Sales Pipeline Reviews

Pipeline reviews meetings are your chance to understand life on the front lines. The critical insight your sales reps and front-line managers have is absolute gold, especially to sales teams that are just starting to catch their groove and are looking to double down on growth.

However just as with actual gold, it usually takes hard work to mine. Treat every minute of pipeline review time with the highest respect and be ready to aggressively set the tone for what level of communication you expect. Short answers and generalizations are not going to cut it here. Learning how to run sales pipeline meetings that are both engaging and electrifying will pay off for your revenue growth big time.

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3. Focus on Improving Each Deal Stage Individually

One of the biggest advantages to breaking up your deals into stages is so that you can focus on improving each individual part of the journey. Instead of thinking “ABC – Always Be Closing” you should be thinking “ABI – Always be Improving”.

Compare your rep’s conversion rates in each stage monthly and have the best performer of each stage talk about what they do in that specific stage. You’ll be surprised how often small things such as “I always send a meeting scheduler link included with our X email just in case” are actually hidden gems of repeatable best practice. Remember, if all your reps increase conversion rates by just 5% in two early deal stages, it can potentially result in up to a 50% increase in the total number of deals closed.  

4. Keep Your Sales Pipeline Extremely Clean

Treat your pipeline with the same love and care as you would a brand-new Ferrari. Stalled deals are the dirt and grime of your sales team and sales reps are usually hesitant to clean them out because “it still COULD close”. This quickly clogs up your pipeline, makes it difficult to know where you are actually at, and reduces your rep’s ability to focus on the right deals. Therefore, commit to cleaning out your pipeline every month, learn the anatomy of stalled deals, and keep your sales process engine running at maximum effectiveness.   

5. Create Role Specific Sales Playbooks

All sales reps and managers can benefit from having an up-to-date sales playbook. It’s proof that your process is repeatable and acts as the first line of aid to your team when they feel challenged. Tips, tricks, and techniques that have worked in the past are all extremely valuable tools for increasing the performance of your team across the board. It’s not only for sales reps either, front-line sales managers should have their own playbook as well that focuses on helping both the deals and their reps.

During your regular pipeline reviews, make sure to bring up the playbook as a topic every time and give people the chance to provide feedback on the tactics inside. Ask which were used since the last review meeting and what the result was and then ask if there is anything that should be added or changed.  Your playbook also increases the sales process compliance of your sales team, as it prevents people from going rogue when they feel like they have hit a wall.

Sales Management

When is it Time to Update Your Sales Playbook

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From May 1940 to June 1940, Nazi Germany took control of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and even France.

It took them only six weeks to bring one of the most powerful nations of the early twentieth century to heel.

How did this happen? Simply put, France did not update their military strategies to prepare for the Nazi invasion. World War I was fought using trench warfare, and the French military assumed World War II would be fought in the same way.

Then the blitzkrieg came. The blitzkrieg was a strategy that utilized new technologies and made trench warfare a completely useless defense tactic.

France’s dependency on old military tactics was the reason Nazis won so easily.

The lesson to sales managers from these historical events is that you cannot rely on old strategies and playbooks to win every future challenge. Sometimes sales managers need to go back to the playbook and adjust it to prevent a blitzkrieg against the company.

Some signs that show its time to relook at the sales playbook are:

  • Sales reps are not engaging with it
  • Competitors are growing faster than you
  • Sales processes and technology are outdated
  • Market changes occur

Nobody is Engaging with the Sales Playbook

A sure-fire sign that it’s time to update the playbook is if nobody is using it. If sales reps never glance at it, sales management never checks in on it, then it really serves no purpose. But don’t make assumptions about the sales playbook right away. There could be many reasons why sales reps don’t utilize it.

Issue: Improper training

One of the reasons why sales reps may not be engaging with the sales playbook is because they’ve never received proper training on how to use it. Sometimes in the daily grind, sales reps become so busy they don’t have time to glance at it.

The good news is that if this is the issue, then there is a chance you won’t need to rewrite or change the sales playbook. The answer is to simply call a training meeting. This way sales reps can set aside an hour out of their busy schedules to focus on learning the sales playbook.

Issue: Difficult to use

When it comes to making sales and engaging with customers, sales reps need to be quick. The potential clients they are engaging with don’t want to spend extra time sitting on a call while a sales rep is flipping through their sales playbook trying to find the proper response to questions. Also, sales reps don’t want to deal with the hassle of trying to find information that isn’t easily accessible.

Like the issue of improper training, if this is the issue then you may not need to rewrite the sales playbook. The issue doesn’t lie with what is in the sales playbook, but rather how it is presented. There are many ways to fix this error. Sales managers could take their sales playbook and make it digital. They could make the sales playbook more succinct. Whatever it is, all the sales playbook needs is a makeover to pretty it up.

Issue: Lack of Value

Of course, there is always the chance that sales reps aren’t using the sales playbook because they don’t see the value in it. Sometimes this is the first-place sales managers jump to and sometimes their response can be frustration with sales reps. After all, didn’t you spend hours working on it? Shouldn’t they appreciate the wisdom you poured into it?

In this case, play both student and educator with sales reps. Listen to their input about why they feel the sales playbook is ineffective. Are there processes that take too much time? Do they have better luck selling to a different decision-maker then the one listed? At the same time, sales managers can defend the sales playbook and try to show how using it will lead to greater success. But as sales managers listen to their reps, there may be new insights or strategies that will alter the information inside the sales playbook.

Competitors are Booming

Keeping a tab on competitor’s activities and growth is something all companies should be doing. Simply scanning a competitor’s LinkedIn page to see how many employees they have or watching for funding reports about them can reveal how fast the opposition is growing.

It is also good to keep an ear to the ground when listening to potential clients. Take note of comments like “Competitor X offers these services in addition to the standard package,” or “I would like to use your service, but competitor Y is willing to do the same for a lower price.”

If competitors are growing at a rapid pace, this means their sales reps are taking cuts of the market that could go to your sales reps. While there are many reasons why that could be the case, the sales playbook may need an update to keep up with the competition.

Specifically, investigate these three areas of the sales playbook that may need attention.

Technology

Technology provides a massive advantage to sales teams. It can perform feats such as sales forecasting and pipeline management. A sales playbook will detail the different technologies used by the sales team and how to properly manage it.

But technology development is not stagnant. It is constantly improving processes and data accuracy. With that in mind, competitors could be using technologies that make it easier to contact the right individuals at the right times. The technology could also be streamlining processes and giving sales reps more time to engage with potential clients.

Take time to analyze whatever tools your sales team is using. Are there better services and tools out there? Remember, it was advancements in military technology that cost France so greatly. The right technology used with the right strategies will play a massive role in the survival of a company.

Processes

If you have the right technology, then it’s time to look at strategy and sales processes are the actionable steps of a strategy. Processes are important because they provide guidelines on how to effectively close sales.

But not all processes are perfect.

Some processes aren’t worth the effort. These processes may be taking too much time from sales reps from doing what matters most.

Other processes are too risky. Are there some processes that speed up the sale but come at the expense of quality and customer satisfaction?

When this happens, sales managers need to address their sales pipeline and find where in the process are they losing potential clients. Does it happen at the demo stage, price negotiation?

As processes are updated in the sales playbook, then sales reps will have processes in place that will help them out-message competitors.

People

Sometimes competitors are booming because their sales reps are better trained, or they have more sales reps.

The sales playbook should contain information that will help sales reps learn the basics necessary to sell the product. If sales reps are not getting this information out of the sales playbook, then the sales playbook will need updating to provide the needed training.

If the competitor has more sales reps, then the sales playbook will need to focus on winning key clients rather than a taking a broad approach.

The Market Changes

Changes in the business ecosystem require adaptation. It’s simply evolutionary biology, as the environment changes, then the organism must adapt to survive. In this case the organism is the company, the environment is the market, and the adaptation is the changes in approach to sales.

Whenever there is a massive shift within the market, be prepared to respond and update the sales playbook to match the changes.

Changes to Target Audience

Many startups began with a vision of who would appreciate their product. They spend countless hours and dollars on developing strategies to reach out and connect with whoever their target audience is.

Then sales reps discover that someone else within the market is more interested in the product then the initial target audience. After a sales manager realizes their product is a better fit with a different audience, then they’ll need to shift strategies and messaging to resonate with the new target audience.

Also, whoever the product is intended for may not be the decision maker who approves a sale. As sales reps engage with their target audience, they may find that someone else in the company—and sometimes from an entirely different department—is the one they should be speaking to.

For example, a company sells a software to help with recruitment, which is normally an HR function. However, the person who approves the sale is the person in charge of finances. In this instance, the sales playbook should focus on the right messaging for finance leaders.

Changes Within the Industry

Once upon a time, newspapers were delivered by boys riding on bicycles. Now all I have to do is swipe my phone to the right and I get the news instantly. How did selling newspaper subscriptions change?

Instead of sales reps knocking on doors, now there are pay-walls.

Industry changes are largely something out of the control of sales managers. New technologies arise. Once established companies close their doors, while others rise to the top. All these shifts in the industry will alter the sales playbook.

Take time each week to keep up-to-date with industry trends. Ask sales reps to report on any changes they see. By paying close attention to changes on the horizon, sales managers can preemptively edit their sales playbook to reflect an ever-evolving industry.

Product Changes

According to CB Insights, the top reason why startups fail is because there is no market need for their product. It is not uncommon for companies to alter their products and services in order to stay relevant.

When the product changes a host of other things change with it, including: target audience, value propositions, discovery questions, messaging, decision makers, etc.

If you’re company changes products or simply adds a new product into the mix, then sales managers will need to update the sales playbook to make the most out of selling the new product.

Sales Management

The Framework of an Effective Sales Playbook

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Has there ever been a professional sports team who walked onto a field without a playbook? If so, they probably had a horrible record.

Why? It’s because playbooks are a vital part of any team effort. The two go hand in hand. If there is a large team working towards a goal, then a playbook is necessary.

While sales is not sports, the two share similar traits. Both have a team, and those team work towards a goal. Therefore, a playbook is needed.

Seems logical.

But not every sales organization utilizes or even creates a sales playbook. The reasons why vary. Some sales managers simply don’t have the time to create one, some don’t know how to start, and some just don’t see the purpose.

Regardless of the excuse given, it is undeniable that having a playbook is useful.

Why the Need for a Sales Playbook?

To begin with, we need to know the purpose behind a sales playbook, and the purpose is linked with a who. So, who is the sales playbook being created for? Obviously, it’s the sales reps, but more specifically, a sales playbook should be created with the new sales reps in mind.

When sales managers focus on creating a sales playbook for new hires, the playbook takes on an added purpose. Veteran sales reps in the company are familiar with processes and they have adapted and implemented their own twists to improve sales processes.

New hires don’t have the same confidence. They are struggling to get into a rhythm where they can consistently hit numbers. This moment of confusion becomes a problem in their onboarding. Without some guide to assist them, odds are their first impression of a company is confusing and disheartening, and this increases the chances they will perform worse and seek to join another company.

Furthermore, as sales becomes focused on technology, there is a need for sales to be consistently delivering predictable results. A chaotic work environment where everyone is calling their own shots means that the month’s results are a dice roll.

The only way repeatable success can happen is if sales reps are unified in a collective approach to sales. A sales playbook can become that foundation for consistent growth.

Simply put, an effective playbook will do the following:

  • Reduce turnover
  • Create uniformity
  • Promote collective growth
  • Drive revenue
  • Prevent miscommunication
  • And create repeatable success

And what sales manager wouldn’t want that?

What is the Framework of an Effective Sales Playbook?

In other words, what should I put into a sales playbook that will accomplish the outcomes mentioned above?

The focus of the playbook should be around the processes of the sales team. Meaning, the playbook focuses more on actions, but it is important to include information that gives sales reps a comprehensive look at how sales fits within the company.

Here are 10 topics that should be covered in a sales playbook:

1. Company Overview

Good candidates for a job will walk into interviews with sales managers having a foundational understanding of the company they hope to work for.

But a surface level understanding of the company won’t adequately prepare them for the culture, processes, and coworkers they are about to face.

This is a chance to help a new hire understand the overall company strategy and how sales fits in with it. Some elements to consider are an overview of history, growth, goals, hierarchy, and culture.

2. Product Overview

A sales rep that sells a product they don’t understand is a close equivalent to a snake oil salesman. While a good sales rep knows how to sell, that doesn’t mean they understand the product being sold.

The purpose of including a product overview is more for the sake of new hires. Giving them an in-depth understanding of what the product is will vastly improve their confidence when interacting with potential customers.

3. Target Audience

Knowing the product is only the first step, the next is knowing where that product fits best. Knowing the product is like understanding the dart, but the target audience is the bullseye.

A target market guides the focused efforts of sales reps.

Give a description of who the target audience is. What’s the company size? What role in the company are you trying to contact? Who will the product help and—more importantly—who are the decision makers?

Bear in mind that a product can have many target audiences across a variety of demographics. But changes in demographics also require a change in approach.

4. Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are useful to sales reps because it gives an example of the target audience. The different personas can be fictional or real life examples encountered by sales management. Either way, the buyer personas help sales reps visualize the individuals they are selling to. They humanize the raw data of target audience demographics.

The buyer personas should detail the frustrations of the target audience. By telling a story about the target audience, sales reps can see just how a product can be a benefit to the person in question.

5. Discovery Questions

How should sales reps quickly identify if the person they are engaging with is first the target audience and second worth pursuing the time and energy to engage with?

Discovery questions are the initial stages of interaction with potential clients. They seek to do three things:

  • Identify if it’s the right person
  • Understand their challenges
  • Empathize with their plight

Giving examples of how to do these three things will help sales reps move through the initial stages quickly. It will also help sales reps focus more on listening to potential clients and preparing unique value propositions rather than just pitching cookie-cutter talking points.

6. Sales Processes and Stages

The sales process has stages that take a potential customer from first contact to sale. Those stages can be the initial stage, demo, price negotiation, close sale and many more. Whatever it is, map out what journey the sales rep will need to go on to create a positive experience for potential clients.

List out activities in the initial stage like touch cadence. How often should a sales rep attempt to contact a potential client? What medium should that contact be in?

Email campaigns are a part of sales processes and stages. List out what emails should include, how often they should be sent, and how to recognize if a potential client is interested.

Throughout the sales process, customers will have objections. Give sales reps a variety of examples of what objections they may face and the best responses to help ease concerns.

The sales processes and stages should take up a large portion of the sales playbook because there is so much information that needs to be packed in it. This is the day-to-day activities of each sales rep, so be sure to empower them with enough information to make these processes as smooth and efficient as possible.

7. Pricing

Sometimes a sales rep can go rogue and offer a price that was never approved of by sales management. And sales management doesn’t have time to evaluate every single price negotiation. Thankfully the options aren’t just letting sales reps set their own gut-based prices or micromanaging every interaction.

By giving a pricing guide, sales managers can give set boundaries for sales reps to run around in. While there may be rare instances where a sales manager will need to approve certain prices, overall sales reps should be autonomous while setting prices during negotiation.

8. KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) will give sales reps an idea of what activities are considered the most important for success. It will also be the focus of sales management during personal interviews so sales reps won’t be caught flat-footed.

9. Technology, CRM, Tools

Sales processes are becoming intertwined with different technologies so that the two are almost synonymous. If sales reps don’t understand the technology used by the sales team, then they won’t understand the processes either.

The sales playbook should detail what tools are at the disposal of sales reps and the best way to use them. Stress the importance of tracking data and interacting with the systems. Without information input from sales reps then sales managers will be clueless as to what is going on and how processes can be improved.

10. Competitive Analysis

“If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles,” is a quote from Sun Tzu in “The Art of War.” So far, the sales playbook has information to help sales reps know the company (yourself) but what about competitors (the enemy)?

Keeping a pulse on competitor’s growth and strategies is worth mentioning in the sales playbook because they are a key factor in determining how to out-message them.

What are the Traits of Effective Sales Playbooks

The previous two sections addressed the why of sales playbooks and what should go in them. But all that knowledge is useless if it isn’t presented correctly. As the saying goes, “presentation is everything.” Here are some traits a sales playbook should have to be successful.

Succinct

Keep it brief.

Why?

People have low attention spans.

Big paragraphs make it hard to find important information

And it’s boring to read a lot about workplace policies.

Flexible

A staple strategy in the National Football League (NFL) is the audible. In the NFL, a quarterback can choose to change the current play to a different one in response to the enemy team’s defense. Some of the best quarterbacks were ones who utilized audibles correctly.

“A quarterback needs to have options out on the field and the ability to move from a play that could yield a negative result,” said BJ Kissel at Bleacher Report.

Sales reps are like quarterbacks; sometimes they need to make a call that goes outside the playbook to prevent a negative result. While it is good to have a structured process, this doesn’t mean everything has to be “by the book” in every situation.

A good sales playbook is one that equips sales reps with a wide variety of tactics and strategies which gives sales reps the flexibility to call an audible.

Transparent

Few things are more relieving to a sales rep then knowing the expectations of sales management have been met. However, not knowing what is expected creates anxiety.

Being transparent with expectations and processes can go a long way in helping sales reps feel at ease in the workplace. Don’t hold back information or details that would be pertinent to sales reps.

This also means sales management needs to commit to the sales playbook. If a sales rep is following the proper protocol but still failing, then perhaps the error doesn’t lie with the sales rep, but rather in the sales playbook itself.

Digital

Sales has come a long way. Once sales reps would drive across the country knocking on doors while holding a briefcase that contained the information they needed to sell right. Now sales reps spend much of their time in front of screens while making phone calls and sending emails.

The sales playbook should adapt to this shift. A digital copy provides easy access and can even help when searching for information. Furthermore, research shows that future generations are showing a greater interest in electronic mediums.

However, hard copies still have their merit. Some studies show that reading print leads to higher retention rates and is better for those with sleep problems.

With that in mind, creating a digital and a hard copy of the sales playbook is worth considering.

Developing

There should never be a “final draft” of the sales playbooks. A developing sales playbook is one that is constantly looking for input on how to improve or adapt.

As market trends change, sales playbooks will need to be revised and an effective sales playbook is one that avoids becoming stagnant.

To get the most out of updating the sales playbook, have sales reps share insights into how it can be improved. By sharing ownership of the sales playbook with the entire sales team, sales management can simultaneously improve the effectiveness of the playbook and boost retention of the content amongst sales reps.

Sales Strategy

The Ultimate Guide to SaaS Pricing Strategy

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Effectively pricing your SaaS product is a constantly evolving strategy that requires fluidity, wit, and dedication. The impact can be unbelievable though, even going so far as single-handedly making, or breaking, your entire business. Pricing impacts the efficiency of your sales team, how the rest of the business world perceives you, and even influences the growth of your industry as a whole. “Set it and forget it” is not a term that applies here, so get ready to roll up your sleeves and dive into the pricing strategy guide you need to not just avoid getting crushed by your competition, but maximize your revenue potential sweep the market by storm.

Bottom Up Pricing

One strategy is to build your pricing structure from the ground up starting from the cost of service and then calculating what you need to hit revenue targets. This can be a good method to use when you are first starting out or don’t have a comparable price to benchmark against.

The cons of using a method such as this is that it removes the psychological aspect from your pricing strategy, which is an important element that must be considered before any kind of mature pricing strategy can be created.

Still, even though it’s basic, it’s worth exploring to get the gears turning in your head and ensuring you know what your minimum price must be to stay profitable.

Revenue Derived Pricing

Another strategy is to craft your pricing based on revenue per lead. A step up from the more basic method described above, this comes from multiplying your conversion rates against your price and then testing it across multiple prices to create a rainbow of various revenue per lead results. Doing this will give you some great insight into testing the waters of where you can set your price, as you can keep increasing the price until you start to see a drop in conversion rates and then comparing the end result efficiency of revenue per lead to guide your decision.

Price $ x Conversion Rate %  = Revenue Per Lead (RPL)

After experimenting with different price points, you’ll end up with a spread of different results that give you some insight into the relationship between the price, conversion rate, and RPL.

  • $1500/mo x 10% win rate = $150 RPL monthly or $1800 RPL annually
  • $650/mo x 30% win rate = $195 RPL monthly or $2340 RPL annually
  • $400/mo x 20% win rate = $80 RPL monthly or $960 RPL annually

While it’s not a perfect solution, it applies a formalized methodical process to exploring your pricing with results that are very reasonable to compare.

Comparison Benchmark Pricing

When it comes to the mechanics of building a pricing strategy, comparison against your competitors is one of the most powerful pieces of strategy that you have. Matching their price, going lower, going higher, or even going completely different – Whatever your strategy ends up being,  your competitors pricing makes up the current market and anchors your potential buyer’s perspectives in one way or another.

After identifying your competitor’s pricing you can then move into how you want to position yourself against said competition. This is where the psychological strategy around pricing really come into play. There are various directions you can go, each with different risks, rewards, and communications to your buyers about your product.

Charging more than the competition can portray a sense of premium quality to potential buyers, with the downside being that they are likely to turn you down if their expectations of a higher quality are not fulfilled.

Charging less than your competition can portray a sense of bargain to potential buyers, however this always raises need for justification in their mind. Why are you priced lower? Is it because you are a lower quality? Smaller? People weren’t buying it at a higher price?

Taking these to extremes also give potential buyers completely different signals. Pricing a product much higher than the competition can give potential buyers a sense that you are actually not in the same category as competitors at all. While pricing a product much lower can give a sense that you are in extreme early stages looking more for feedback rather than an actual sale.

There is also the strategy of pricing yourself equally with competitors and then positioning yourself as providing an additional unique value for free. This can give potential buyers the perception that you intend to be directly compared to competitors with your eyes set on taking a share of the market. Potential buyers will likely have a greater confidence in your solution but will compare you more directly against your possibly more established competition, which is often the path with the highest amount of resistance even with a superior product due to market saturation.

Figuring out which of these, and the countless others not described, is best for your business will take a substantial amount of research. The significance however, is undeniable. Getting it right, or wrong, can truly make or break your business. Fortunately, making a change can provide results immediately, so constantly researching and monitoring your pricing will always provide you with insight that is immediately valuable.

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Interviewing Potential Buyers

Another invaluable weapon at your disposal is the ability to interview potential buyers and gather their priceless feedback. The primary challenge here, is guiding potential buyers to give you information that is actually useful and that can be compiled into actionable insight.

The language you use when communicating this request plays a very significant role in how they will construct their feedback. Make sure to use explicit words such as “research” or “interview”, so that they understand there really is no strings attached in your approach. Often times people will make a request for “feedback” and then use it as an opportunity to sell. While this is tempting to do, if you want protect the integrity of your buyer’s pricing insight its important that you execute the opportunity exactly as you communicated to them ahead of time. Make it clear that you are in “learning mode” so that they feel free to give their opinion as honestly as possible.

Once you have their time, it comes to asking the right questions after a demo of your product. Ask them questions such as “How would you expect this product to be priced?” and “What do you think would be a fair price for this product?”. The first question of “how” is useful to prevent you from pricing your product in a confusing way. As an example, Salesforce is priced based on a “per seat” model. Your potential buyer may relate your product to Salesforce and explain that it should be priced in the same way. It may not even be a relation to a specific product that associate you with, it might just be a pricing structure they are familiar with. In either case, it’s an important insight to hear as choosing an easily understandable and familiar buying structure helps build confidence in buyers.

As for inquiring about what they think is a fair price, the purpose of this question is more straightforward but obviously must be considered with a grain of salt depending on your interviewee’s knowledge base of similar products. Even still, asking what they think is a fair price is a reliable way to ensure that you don’t accidently underprice your product. Most likely you’ll hear your answer in the form of a range, perhaps something like “somewhere between $12,000 to $18,000”, so make sure to pick their brain on how they came up with their range. Although this can be a great reference point, it’s important to note though that at the end of the day, nothing tells you what buyers will actually be willing to pay better actually asking them to do so.

Who Should Be Involved in SaaS Pricing Strategy?

Something that doesn’t get discussed very often is what teams should be involved in the engineering of the pricing model. As a typical process of evolution, the CEO is usually the first person to set an initial price during the extremely early stages of the growth. After that, it often becomes a bit of the wild west in terms of who controls the pricing. Sometimes the CEO may hold on to the responsibility of pricing for an extended period of time, sometimes finance will take over and set prices based on projections needed to hit numbers, and sometimes sales will take ownership due to their front line exposure in the trenches. Deciding which team is the most appropriate can be difficult to determine and may vary from business to business, however there are certain logical “best practices” that can be considered to help guide the evolution of this responsibility.

The first of these being the early removal of the CEO from the pricing structure. This is not because they don’t have a valuable opinion on the matter, but rather because the CEO is often the most passionate believer in the company. Because of this, they are often stricken with some level of bias around the value of the product or service. While this is a positive force in most situations (if your CEO doesn’t believe with all of their heart in business then you have a much bigger problem than pricing), when it comes to pricing this view of the value can overpower the data coming from the market and potential customers.

Interestingly, a better alternative that is often overlooked, is pricing strategy falling under the responsibility of the product team or the product marketing team. This works surprisingly well due to their superior knowledge of the marketplace and where new opportunities for growth may come to fruition, which houses its own ecosystem of unique competitors and buyers. Further, pricing strategy is one of the most impactful sales and marketing alignment mistakes you can and should avoid at all costs.

This is not to say that all of the responsibility should reside solely with the product team though. While it’s typically most effective to give them the final say, it’s beneficial to include other departments in regular discussion of pricing. Sales as an example, is obviously an essential fountain of insight into the frontlines of customer interaction. A great way to make sure you tap into the potential insights from each of these teams is to by creating a monthly discussion between the sales, marketing, finance, and product teams. Just be sure to have one team specifically designated to be the final decision makers or the overload of competing information will quickly dissolve into chaos.  

Putting it all together

At the end of the day, there is no silver bullet for discovering where your pricing should be to maximize sales effectiveness. This is why great business leaders know the importance of developing it tirelessly and always allocating the proper resources needed to get the right strategy figured out. Ironically, finding the right pricing strategy always inevitably leads to itself becoming obsolete because its success causes your business to evolve, and as your business evolves, so must your pricing strategy. But the highest caliber of rewards always await businesses that can master catching the wind time and time again, so get out there and make it happen!

Sales Management

How to Hit Sales Goal Targets: Reevaluate Sales Management Goals

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On average, 80 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail according to US News. If you’re one of those rare few who manage to accomplish their resolutions, then congratulations you understand the importance of setting manageable goals.

For the rest of us who struggle in the area of goal setting, our goal is to improve our goals. One department of growing companies that should understand the value of goal setting—perhaps more than any other department—is sales management. After all, sales teams are a large part of setting the pace of growth within an organization, and goal setting can determine the speed at which success comes.

But sometimes sales management sets goals that don’t deliver results, and this is because the goals and process to create them were flawed. When sales managers sit down to set goals, here are some questions they should ask to help form effective goals that drive growth.

Do you remember the previous goals?

Human nature is forgetful. How many times have we walked into a room only to forget why we came in there in the first place? If our brains are wired such that we forget something in less than a minute, then remembering the goals set a week before might be a challenge.

When we lose sight of our goals, we spend our energies doing ineffective activities. Furthermore, forgotten past goals create problems for future goals because whatever processes were in place during the previous goal setting could be replicated in the current session.

There are numerous tricks to conquering this natural shortcoming. While there is no one right answer for every individual, here are a couple tricks you can utilize to outsmart your own brain.

  1. Use visual cues to help recall sales goals e.g. if the goal is to close X number of sales, then change your computer’s wallpaper to that number.
  2. Take time each day to review your goals. Even just five minutes of briefly scanning the goals can orient your brain to focus on achieving them for the rest of the day.
  3. Place reminders of your goals in spots you frequently visit, like the fridge in the breakroom.
  4. If you’re feeling especially creative, you can create rhymes or little songs out of your goals. (You may laugh, but I still remember my home phone number from when I was 7 years-old because of this.)

These are just a few tricks to help with remembering goals. Work with your own brain, are you more visual, audio, or kinetic? Whatever method you use, the important takeaway is that it’s worth taking the time to remember sales goals.

Do the sales reps know the goals?

This may seem like a repeat of the last question but thinking of how sales reps will remember the goals requires a different focus. Chances are if sales management is the goal setter, then sales management may be the only group that remembers the goals.

It is perhaps even more dangerous when sales reps forget the sales goals, then when sales management forgets. The reason is because sales reps are the ones who put in the effort to accomplish the goals. While sales management is busy prepping for meetings with the c-suite, compiling forecast data for the board of directors and training sales teams, their time spent making calls, engaging with potential customers, and closing deals is limited.

Constantly orienting sales teams towards goals is a valuable exercise to do daily. Having sales reps take five minutes when they first come in to refamiliarize themselves with the goals will result in hours of more productive activities.

Are the goals in line with the overall company strategy?

As a sales manager, the company’s growth and revenue rests heavily on your shoulders.

No pressure, right?

But sales is only a part of the whole company and it needs to work with multiple other departments in order to succeed. This is why understanding the overall company strategy is important. It is there to guide every aspect of the company on a broad and general scale. It tells sales management what the direction of the company is, why the company is going in that direction, how to get started on that path, and what resources are available.

Just like it’s worth taking a quick look at goals each day, it’s also valuable to remind oneself of the company strategy. The nice part of having a company strategy is that when sales management sits down to set goals, there is already an established foundation for getting started. Also, if you face a mental block, then the company strategy can provide inspiration.

What is the nature of the goals?

Not all goals are equal. The inequality among goals is due in large part to the nature of the goal. Take a moment to look at some classic New Year’s resolutions. According to a poll by YouGov, the most common resolutions of 2018 were:

  • Eat healthier
  • Get more exercise
  • Save (more) money

After seeing goals like these, it is understandable why New Year’s resolutions have such a low success rate. Why? It’s because the nature of these goals is a setup for inevitable failure! They are ambiguous, lack any standard for achievement, and show little desire to commit.

Instead, we want goals that avoid vague results. Ask yourself, what is the objective standard for the success of a goal? Setting a standard improves the chances of success significantly. Let’s take the example of eating healthier. A standard we could apply to this would be, “I will keep my daily calorie consumption below 2,200.”

When setting goals, change the nature of goals from subjective to objective. By setting a clear standard there is a distinct threshold of success and this gives a target for sales management and reps to strive for.

How ambitious are the goals?

Ambition is a fantastic trait to possess. But too much ambition can have negative consequences. Let’s imagine a new hire joins the team and sets a goal that goes far beyond the success rate of even the best sales reps in the company. What happens when that goal is inevitably never realized? At first everything may seem fine, but overtime constant failure is disheartening and will eventually kill ambition.

Likewise, goals that are lackluster will result in passionless efforts. This in turn will also kill ambition.

Sales management needs to find the “goldilocks zone” of goal setting; goals that are neither too hot nor too cold. Identifying this zone is simple if goals with objective standards are set. With goals that now have objective standards, we can identify a perfect middle ground between the two extremes. Create a spectrum using the previous week’s numbers. Set a range of what goes too far and what will come up too short. Then use this spectrum to evaluate the boundaries individual sales reps will operate in.

Ambition is a desirable trait in sales reps, but like a fire, it needs constant fuel. And that fuel is success. But don’t discount the success of occasionally failing. Failing to meet goals can provide great learning opportunities to help struggling sales reps.

Was technology used in goal-setting?

Welcome to 2018, where everything is touched by technology. There’s no escaping it now. And the reason why new technology is constantly interjecting itself into our lives is because of the results it can produce. Organizations that implement technology into their sales operations always have a competitive edge.

What technology does is remove some of the mind-stressing work that could take hours to complete. Sales forecasting is taking the stress of goal creation and presenting all the relevant information anyone in sales management could need. Not sure if a goal is too ambitious or lackluster? Sales forecasting can show you exactly where the middle ground will be. It takes all past data and analyzes it to see what the most likely outcome for a week is.

Gut-based goal setting is rapidly losing value as a successful process. The best steps sales management can take is to implement sales technology yesterday. Simply taking the time to find a sales management software that gives insight and transparency into sales processes will transform goal-setting from subjective and gut-based to measurable and objective. Goals created with the latter traits will soon become the only method by which organizations can grow effectively.

When to reevaluate goal setting

Goals should be constantly reviewed and modified, but bad goals are symptoms of the real issue. The real problem lies in bad goal setting, and if bad processes remain in place for goal setting, then only bad goals can follow.

Bad process will never create a good product.

If you notice that your goals are proving inefficient, then it’s time to analyze the potential problems behind goal-setting. Ask the questions above and diagnose where the issue lies. Does it lie in human nature, lack of technology, or both? Whatever it is, there is always something more that can be done to improve the value of goals, and the processes in place to create them should be evaluated alongside the goals themselves.

Sales Management, Sales Meetings

Sales Meeting Ideas to Drive Engagement

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Running a great sales team meeting is at the center of your responsibilities as powerful sales leader. It’s one of your most visible and influential tools available, with eyes on you from all directions being impacted. So, what’s the secret to running a sales meeting that inspires your front-line and impresses C-level at the same time? That’s exactly what this article will cover.

Sales Meeting Themes

Before we can look at actual meeting ideas, we first need to establish some best practices around how you should run your sales team meetings. The three methods that should be consistent across all of your various meetings should be positive reinforcement, team building, and dynamic tactics.

1) Positive reinforcement

“Positive reinforcement is the most important and most widely applied principle of behavior analysis”
– Cooper, Heron and Heward

It’s important to understand the differences between these types of reinforcements and punishments. It’s easy to become misconstrue the type of behavioral conditioning you are intending to use with the type of behavioral conditioning you are actually using. The 4 types of behavior conditioning in psychology are:

Positive Punishment – Adding something bad when something bad happens

Negative Punishment – Taking away something good when something bad happens

Positive Reinforcement – Adding something good when something good happens

Negative Reinforcement – Removing something bad when something good happens

For sales meetings, you can most effectively motivate your team by using positive reinforcement in the form of verbal praise. When recapping, recognize the positive work your team is doing and highlight it. Anything that you would like to see more of in the form of results or practices is great to point out. This is the most widely effective technique that will generate the motivational response that you intend in your sales team.

During discussion topics, positively reward engaged discussion. When people are contributing reinforce their behavior by engaging, exploring the idea, and praising the contribution.

2) Team Engagement

As a sales manager, one of the most impactful things you can do is promote a team centered environment. Although the difficulty of this task will vary depending on the group of individuals that you have, it always starts in team meetings. It’s the one place you always have the whole team together consistently so think of it as being in the locker room before the big game. Your responsibility as a coach is to prepare your team to perform at their maximum potential but ultimately once they head out on the field, they are the ones that need bring home the win. Make it known that you view your sales team like a team and use the time you have with them together to promote this atmosphere. In doing so, you’ll performance grow across the board and natural leaders will emerge to support the rest of the team.

You can help build a team-centered atmosphere by giving them responsibilities to complete as a team such as meeting ideas, optimizing the sales process, and competing against other teams in friendly competition.

3) Dynamic approach to meetings

Doing the same thing over and over again will always result in diminishing returns. At the same time, there are certain things that need to be done over and over again because they work. So how do you get your cake and eat it too? The answer is to take consistently fresh approaches to the same important activities. Change things up, use a different structure, even move the furniture around every so often. It doesn’t have to be different every time, but never let it go without change for more than a couple months max. This will go a long way to keeping your team engaged.

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Sales Meeting Ideas

Keeping the methods above in mind, here are some meeting ideas that we have seen tremendous success with.

  • Efficiency and Effectiveness

A great meeting idea is a critical discussion with your sales team about the difference between sales productivity and sales efficiency. Allow for some open responses and discussion to start things off. Then you can move into some guided interpretations to move the conversation to the next stage.

What is Sales Efficiency?

Sales efficiency comes down to the amount of resources (both time and money) that are spent achieving the set sales goals. For example, how long does it take to get a prospect to the first demo meeting? How many calls and emails did it take? Analyzing efficiency challenges us to make the most of our day.

What is Sales Effectiveness?

Are you doing the right things to achieve your sales goal and targeted revenue? Sales effectiveness can really be broken down into the success rate of your sales goals. Perhaps 5 phone calls and 2 emails are more effective than 3 phone calls. Perhaps 4 calls with a certain talking point is more effective than 6 phone calls without it.

So how do the two compare? Ask your team if they ever consider the difference between these two concepts in their own performance and daily resource allocation. Ask them to take a look at their own day-to-day and come up a translation into the current sales process and how they might make a suggestion to improve the sales process with these perspectives in mind. As an added bonus, here is a checklist to help you improve your team’s effectiveness:

  1. Availability of right tailored content at the right time
  2. Consistently improving the sales process by setting different goals
  3. Feeding data insights into the process
  4. Providing training to strike effective conversation with stakeholders
  • Analytics vs Analysis

This next meeting idea is another discussion topic design to get your team engaged in critical thinking. Ask them what they think the difference is between analytics and analysis and don’t confirm any responses for the first few minutes. Just keep allowing different responses and open discussion.

A great discussion trick is to purposefully withhold validation of people’s responses. This subconsciously causes the people in the room to interpret that more discussion is needed or they should reconsider the response that was given. After you have gotten some good responses, you can jump in and give your thoughts.

Analytics: Analytics is about applying a mechanical or algorithmic process to derive insight

Analysis: Analysis is the heuristic activity used to gain insight

To simplify, analytics is the process of how you set yourself up to perform analysis. Ask your team to come up with examples of these two concepts in the current sales process. Do they track something specific that is used later to make analysis?

The end goal of this meeting is to drive critical thought around the important of CRM health which is used to fuel the analysis of the sales process.

  • NFL Playoff Probabilities

This one is a fun take on a forecasting meeting that was a huge hit for us internally. We challenged our sales team to come up with a method of forecasting the NFL teams that will make the playoffs. We gave them about 30 minutes to come up with their answer and let them lead the discussions internally with minimal guidance from leadership. There was a great team atmosphere with heavy engagement that emerged and after they came up with their response, we spent time critically thinking about their strategies around both the forecasting model and the problem solving/role allocation they naturally used. To tie it all together, we wrapped up the discussion by discussing forecasting within our sales process and how we thought it compared.

We then kept a record of the results on a board and tracked the progress throughout the rest of the season, which continuously gave opportunities for team comradery and discussion.

Putting Your Meeting Together

Combining all these knowledge points together with flawless execution may seem like a daunting task, in fact it most certainly is, but it’s certainly within reasonable reach. What is most significant for improvement is consistency. Stay dedicated to important concepts such as positive reinforcement and strive for dynamic sales meetings that inspire critical thought. You will see results immediately, but they are nothing compared to the results you will see if you stay committed to maximizing the value of your sales meeting time over the long term.

If you found these meeting tips and ideas helpful make sure you check out our other article on team meeting ideas that inspire and motivate your sales team and subscribe to our blog or check back next week. We are dedicated to providing consistent content that helps sales leadership maximize the performance of their team, themselves included. Best of luck with your next meeting!