By: Jim Domanski

Do your field and inside sales team work harmoniously with one another or do they operate unto themselves in separate kingdoms?

Unfortunately many inside and outside sales teams exist in open conflict with one another vying over accounts, sales and territories. The time and effort it requires to handle the subterfuge is simply not worth it. Not only does it impact the morale of your reps (and your company), it affects the relationships and perceptions of your customers and prospects, not to mention your sales revenues.

Inside sales and outside sales can and should work in unison to produce stellar results. Here are 10 ways to bring these two powerful sales teams together and maximize their results.

1. Report to a Single Executive

If the field sales team reports to a sales executive and the inside sales team reports to a customer service or operations executive (as it often does), conflict is inevitable. Each department has different priorities and there are bound to be clashes. But the moment a single sales executive is made directly accountable for the results both teams is the moment that the squabbling ends and entire department begins to fire on all cylinders.

2. Develop Blistering Clear Plans & Communicate

The biggest battle with inside and outside sales teams is ‘who handles this and who gets credits for that.’ While there will never be perfect division of accounts and territories take the time to think and plan your approach. Marginal, inactive and geographical remote accounts are perfect for your tele-sales team and will force you field sales team to focus on priority accounts.

Explain the rationale in writing so it is indelible to them and to you! If accounts are given up or traded, reduce sensitivities by paying double commissions for three or four months. This step will save you hours of needless conflict and help make the transition smoother.

3. Compensate and Motivate in Like Manner

You do not have to pay your inside sales team exactly the same as your field sales reps but you must pay in ‘like’ manner. If your field sales comp program includes base, commission and bonus so too should your inside sales team on a proportionate basis. This strategy reduces the ‘have’ and ‘have not’ mentality.

If there is a sales contest, make certain inside sales is an active participant and ‘mind the gap.’ Avoid the temptation of offering lavish rewards (e.g., the trip to Vegas or Hawaii) for field sales and offering pathetic rewards (toaster ovens or movies passes) for inside sales. If the recognition gap is so vast- and it often is- it sends a resounding and discouraging message to your inside sales team.

4. Create an In-to-Out Career Path

One of the best strategies is to develop a career path where you inside reps can be promoted to outside reps; a farm system. This will do several things. First, your inside team works harder and smarter for a chance at achieving an outside sales position. Second, the cost of recruiting and selecting a field rep is reduced dramatically. Third, the customer barely notices the transition because they get an experienced, knowledgeable rep. Finally, once the inside rep becomes an outside rep, the integration process becomes much more complete.

5. Attend Conferences, Trade Shows and Other Event, Together

Tension, frustration and confusion are reduced dramatically when the sales teams meet together at the same events, conferences and trade shows. Typically they have to work as a team on the trade floor. They begin to bond at lunch and dinner. They ‘play’ together in evening. It works if for no other reason then they get to know one another.

6. Attend Sales Meeting Together

This is so obvious that it is very often overlooked. Integrate inside and field sales by having them attend the same sales meetings. Have them participate, present results and be held accountable to one another. If the team is geographically spread out, have a conference call so that communication is fostered. If you have a sales rally or president’s club, make absolutely certain that both attend.

7. Train in Exact Manner

If training is required train the teams together. For example, ‘boot camp’ training is a great way to get reps to bond together from the get-go. If you have skills or knowledge training sessions throughout the year, pull your teams together. Do NOT train inside and outside teams separately.

8. The Day in/Day Out program

Here’s one of the best tips to pull your teams together. Every quarter or every six months have the outside reps spend a day on the phone with the inside rep. Have the inside rep spend a day on the road with the field rep. In short order, each rep will have a great appreciation of the job and one another.

9. Do Not Tolerate, Excuse or Permit Saboteurs

Here’s the cold hard truth: depending on your situation and environment, you can expect that some reps will seek to sabotage the efforts of others. A saboteur is a rep who subconsciously and often consciously, seeks to wreck, dilute or cheat the policies you have established. For example, a field rep might say to customers, “I can’t deal with you any more. You’re stuck with an inside rep” and thus taint the entire program. Equally, an inside rep might remark, “Your field reps never visited you in the first place, so I’m your new account rep” which simply shows the customer that your sales team is on shaky ground.

Sentiments like these will lose you customers in a heartbeat. Deal with these saboteurs quickly, efficiently and if necessary, brutally. Stick to the policies. Do not tolerate belligerence because it will fester and spread.

10. Be Vigilant and Keep Your Word

Continuously monitor the integration of your teams. If you get wind of dissension, act fast and deal with it. Get your managers together and talk. Don’t ignore the situation.

Above all, keep your word. Beware the temptation to change the rules as you go because it will have a significant impact on sales results, morale and customer satisfaction. Walk the walk.

By Michael Taplin

Salespeople love having their performance measured; Yeah Right!

Sales people love submitting sales reports. Right on!

Is your sales process measurement a reward system or a punishment system?

The number one motivator for salespeople is making a sale. Just look at their faces when they walk into your office waving an order or a cheque. They are on a real high at that moment. Then they go on to the next prospect and get a knock-back, then another. The spark dies and the target starts to look unachievable. Turning up to next sales meeting to discuss results starts to look like volunteering for a flagellation session.

So the question is “Does your sales measurement system help your people make more sales?”

The answer depends on whether you are measuring results, the number or value of the orders won, or whether you are measuring achievement of milestones on the path to the sale.

The critical issue here is the realization that as a sales manager you cannot manage the result. What you can manage is the activity that produces the result. If your people are doing enough of the right things, and doing them well, they will achieve the result. The only way you can manage the result then is to make all the sales yourself.

If you measure progress along the path to the sale, best done at the critical milestones, then you are in a good place when it comes to guiding a salesperson.

An example may help.

One of your salespeople has had a busy week making calls on qualified prospects, and has generated a backlog of requests for quotation. There is not a single sale in his sales report. He is way behind on the quotes, and you know from experience that if they don’t go out in two or three days the prospects will cool off. He needs guidance from you.

You have a choice of actions.

1. Tell him to stop everything and get the all the quotes out.

2. Tell him he has had a great week. Well done and stick at it.

3. Ask him why he has not made a sale.

4. Show him how to balance up his sales activity so he moves every prospect along the path to the sale at the desired pace. Help him to prioritise his prospects to get the quotes out progressively.

Set out like this, the answer is obvious, but it is time to be honest. What did you do the last time this happened? What is the likely response to these options?

Answer 1 This ensures that he runs out of steam in a week or two, and wonders what has gone wrong.

Answer 2 He cannot make a sale until he quotes.

Answer 3 This focus on the end result is a certain de-motivator.

Answer 4 This is the way to guide him to steady progress and a steady flow of orders.

What you need, to be able to do this, is a system that gives you a sales report on the activity of your sales people and the status of every prospect in the pipeline. Then you can guide them to the activity that will lead to a steady flow of orders. Your sales meeting will become motivational working sessions, rather than de-motivational exhortations to work harder to reach sales targets. Your people will become internally motivated by the certainty of success and their confidence will grow.

If your sales reporting system lists every sales prospect, and the latest milestone in the sales process that has been achieved, you have made a start. If your system assigns a probability value to the present status of each prospect, based on the established relationship between the milestone and the probability of banking the payment, you are way ahead. If your system calculates the expected future value of all the prospects in the pipeline, you know whether they have been working effectively by the change in the expected value, and what they have to do to increase it.

This approach to reporting sales activity and value gets you real information that is hard to fudge. Many sales managers treat sales reports as an advanced form of cheat sheets, with the main question being “How long before the boss finds out?” With a focus on measurable milestones, there is nowhere to hide; either the quote has gone out or it has not. With the probability of success assigned by the system, the guesswork about the quality of the prospect’s relationship with your business is taken out of the equation. The reliability of the information you receive from your team will skyrocket.

You will transform your relationship with your salespeople from boss to coach. Your sales will be easier to forecast because you have removed the peaks and troughs. Life will be so much more satisfying.

How To Measure Sales Success is the question on most sales managers lips at this moment in time when every sales is vital, alongside measuring those who are delivering in your team.

Companies most likely to thrive are those that scrutinize their strategic sales-management plans, from forecasts to pipelines. They look hard at the cost of sales, percentage of market share, salesperson-effectiveness ratios and customer lifetime value. Conversely, companies that struggle often lack such blueprints.
Effective plans require combining an organization’s goals with the individual salesperson’s business plan with a set of metrics designed to gauge everyone’s progress in meeting those objectives. The fundamental metrics to include in “dashboards” for measuring sales team effectiveness:

Accuracy percentage for monthly forecast, by salesperson
Dollar or pound value of pipeline by stage; number of opportunities by stage
Dollar or pound value of pipeline ratio to future monthly quotas
Actual sales activity compared to a defined set of standards
Average order value
Win/loss percentages by salesperson

Beyond the Basics
As you continue developing your dashboard, consider additional metrics such as:

Value of net new account sales as percentage of total sales for month and year to date
Existing account sales as percentage of total sales, month and year to date
Salesperson profitability to sales volume
Revenue per current customer per year as percentage of total sales
Cost per lead by source
Sales-cycle time from initial contact by salesperson to decision
Number of days with sales outstanding, goal vs. actual
Blended billing consultant rate, goal vs. actual
Realization consultant rate, goal vs. actual
Utilization consultant rate, goal vs. actual
Consultant backlog days, goal vs. actual
Direct sales expense as a percentage of volume, margin and quota

Looking Ahead: Leading Indicators

Leading indicators are activities or ratios that can predict revenues at least 60 days out. While simply looking at future pipeline values can provide a similar forecast, these indicators are also useful. In most cases, certain events early in the sales cycle are most likely to lead to high-percentage sales opportunities. If these begin to fall, future pipelines and revenues will probably do the same. Potential leading indicators include:

New-prospect calls made per week
Face-to-face sales calls made per week
Subject-matter expert or pre-sales tech-support calls made per week
Discovery calls made per month
Demonstrations and executive presentations made per month

Graphs comparing these numbers to dollars booked or margins generated help salespeople see the relationship between indicators and results. Finally, the ultimate goal is improving ratios and results each month and each quarter-not simply tracking them. That’s the real reason for developing a dashboard and the real route to success.

Ken Thoreson, Acumen Management president, is a recognized sales management thought leader with more than 20 years of software/technology experience, including 17 in niche market distribution with emerging and high-growth national companies. The sales management strategist is regarded worldwide as an expert in sales execution, channel management, revenue generation, sales analysis, forecasting, recruitment, and training within the sales function. Prior to founding AMGL, he led development-stage, entrepreneurial, and $250-million national vertical software sales organizations as vice president of sales.

Ken is a frequent speaker and keynote presenter at major industry conferences, including Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conferences, Cisco Systems Worldwide Partner Conference, Sales and Marketing Executives International Conference (SMEI), CA World, TechData/TechSelect Member Conferences, Ingram Micro’s XChange Conferences, SAP Partner Conference, SolidWorks World, Gartner IT Visionshare, CompTIA BreakAway, and NASBA Management Academy. He has authored two books and many articles spanning a variety of sales management topics, which have appeared in Personal Selling Power, VARBusiness, Reseller Management, Business Products Professional and SmartReseller. He is currently a columnist for Redmond Channel Partner Magazine.

How to motivate people who work for us is an endless question. Have a look at this video from You Tube that gives some great ideas.

Best Wishes

Denise and Sharon

Managing a Sales Team Motivation Challenges continues with part 2 which goes a little deeper into reward and appraisal.

This is a key area that effects sales peoples motivation. A great surprise to me when I first moved into sales management was what was actually important to people.

It is a false assumption to think it is all about money. Sometimes its something totrally different…even for sales people.

Read on and post on the blog and let us know what you think.

To you and your teams success

Denise and Sharon
PS what out in the next few days for away to win something that can really catapult you and your teams success

Sales manager challenges will be the subject for the next few videos on the blog. Starting with motivation.

I have split this into two parts. So it is easier to digest and gives you time to process the information and the implications for you and the team.

There are key leverage points for sales managers to truly be high performing. One is the ability to be able to ” motivate” and “inspire” your team to success. The others include helping them build their skills and mindset to become unbeatable …and not just when you are there.

Getting the right people in position and then coaching them to success is vital. So OK you might not have recruited them so where do you start to improve their perfomance….and ultimatley your?

Check out the video and post your comments on the blog,

Have a great weekend,

To you and your teams success,

Sahrin and Denise

Motivation is often the key to improving a poor sales performer. Though the term is confusing. Because we cannot motivate anyone. They do it to themselves. Encouragement and validation is the key. Inspire them to action and their own motivation will follow.

How are you Motivating them

First, you should review the kind of motivation that you give the poor performer. Do you know what is important to them. How to press their hot buttons. Once you know this your time and attention can be laser focussed on what matters for them

Do you know the Whole Story

If this poor performer is not feeling the inspiration to work anymore, maybe something is bothering him or her. If you have good rapport this should be easy to find out. If not first start building rapport with them. Often it can be a blip at home which will come and go. Letting your team member know you are there to support can make a big difference and will shorten the curve till performance improves again.

The bottom line here is that you have to know what makes this person tick. When you already capture that, you can capture what motivations drive him also.

Constructive criticism works best

When they do something good, compliment them in such a way that’s direct, friendly and sincere. Be consistent in what you say and do. Stick to the facts. Call it as you see it. Not what you think you have seen. People work best with facts not judgements of what is going on.

Encouragement is the best motivator ever. Use it in abundance and you will be amaze at your results.

To You and Your Teams Success,

Best Wishes

Denise