All posts by Peter Holland

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The One Mistake Not to Make with Existing Clients.

Every company has their favourite customers their top revenue accounts. Often, they may have been with the firm for a number of years, they like you and see value in the work you do. That’s why it’s so easy to fall into the trap of complacency.

A frequent mistake that must be avoided is to let one person be the sole contact responsible for interacting with the client. Often large accounts are lost simply because either the key salesperson at your company moves on or their customer contact leaves. Either way you’re left you out in the cold with no real relationship in place.

This often happens over time when company’s rely on repeat orders and the enthusiasm at the outset of willing the client fades away.

Never forget your best customers are regularly called on by various competitors and their increased level of personal attention might cost you the account.

How can an organisation become truly client driven and focused?

Firstly, a change in mindset is required. Existing clients should never be seen as ‘so and so’s’ customer. They are everyone’s customer and subsequently, everyone’s responsibility. This attitude must be exemplified by top management.

As shown in the above diagram a customer driven company has engagement with their customers across all levels of the company.

How can you achieve this type of connection?

It won’t happen but chance, you need to formalise the engagement process.

Create a matrix with the various people and positions inside your company. Then match them with the corresponding people and roles inside your customer’s organization.
Create alignment across all levels of the business throughout the different departments.
Include in your matrix some activities and the frequency of engagement required by each member of the team. For example, your M.D could arrange to dine with your customer’s senior management once a quarter to discuss overall strategy and joint objectives.

Your key account salesperson, marketing team, customer service team and accounts department can all have their own activities and touch points throughout the year.

Encouraging visits and virtual meetings with their corresponding contact builds stronger working relationships. It’s a lot easier for someone to give poor customer service to someone they’ve never met of the end of the phone. Than to someone they know well and speak to regularly.
This lattice of overlapping and crossing connections ties you strongly into the account with multiple relationships being formed.
This process allows your company to deliver outstanding value in many different ways that goes way beyond just the product or service you sell. Making the decision to move away from you to a competitor that much harder to make.
The final part of this puzzle is to make the completion of these ‘client matrix activities’ highly visible to all. Everyone needs to commit to engage with their opposite number and senior management must encourage these relationships and regularly review progress throughout the year to ensure you’re keep adding value at every stage.

You might think this sounds like quite a bit of work and organisation. And you’d be right. But what’s the alternative?

I’d like to make the case that any investment you make in this area will pay hansom dividends compared with the pain and cost of losing a major account!

Dedicated to Your Continued Sales Success!

Peter

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Have You Recreated Your Virtual Sales Content to Maximise Results?

To maximise your sales effectiveness in a virtual environment you must recreate your sales content.

What do I mean by that? Well, previously if most of your meetings were face to face with customers, you typically wouldn’t have stopped the conversation to power up your laptop to show visuals, videos or draw on a Whiteboard. It would break the rapport and flow of a good conversation.

However, things are very different in a virtual selling situation, new challenges present themselves. It’s not always easy to read the room or pick up on subtle changes in body language. Delivering content and maintaining engagement especially with a group of new prospects is challenging.

But it’s not all bad news, in fact there are great advantages to this virtual environment if you study them and adapt yourself to benefit from them.

So, here are some specific steps you can take to maximise your effectiveness.

Imagine yourself in the prospects virtual situation. What are the current challenges they’re facing? What ways do they need to adapt their business now in 2020? What would your fears and reservations be about doing business with someone you have never met in person?

Empathy holds the key to understanding why someone might not feel comfortable in this business situation.

Answering these questions will give you the insight to create some new engaging content that sparks interest and demonstrates how you can help them achieve success.

Revisit your existing buyer and sales process to see what has changed over this crisis period. You need to think about all the different areas of your sales process to discover where you need to create additional sales content. For example, you’re going to need content for outreach emails, specific content for social media and you will need a ‘virtual tool kit’ of content to handle all the situations you’ll meet in your virtual meetings. One of the key advantages of virtual sales is the ability have this ideal content prepared in advance. Giving you the agility to share quickly various pieces of relevant content in several different media formats.

Align content for each step in the sales process. Then you must personalise it for the individual organisation or the person that you’re going to be working with virtually. It’s not enough to roll out the same presentation ‘cookie cutter’ style and expect an engaged audience.

Content must make decision making easier. Building trust and confidence virtually is harder. So, a critical factor here is that each piece of content must make the decision making process easier. Ask yourself, Is this content I’m sharing easy to understand? Is it clear and logical? Does it make a good business case? And if I were a prospect, would I feel comfortable and confident in taking the next step?

Get feedback & Engagement throughout. To overcome the challenges of reading the room it’s vital to acknowledge prospects thoughts and feelings by checking in frequently to make sure that you’re all on the same page.

Regularly confirm back what you’re hearing from them to make sure that you have understood correctly and have their engagement.

If at any point in the call you see that maybe they’re not quite engaged you need to stop your presentation. Maybe, pause and suggest using a whiteboard together. Talk through how you could apply the information to their personal situation, answer any questions and ultimately collaborate on a potential solution.

So, in conclusion, make a wise investment and dedicate the time to review your sales process. Then adapt it as needed by creating a ‘Virtual Tool Kit’ that delivers real engagement and makes you standout from the competition!

Dedicated to Your Continued Sales Success!

Peter

6 Top Tips to Create Winning Virtual Sales Results.

No one saw COVID-19 coming, and as a result, your sales content and process must adapt rapidly to the virtual environment.

Sales leaders across the world are struggling to pivot their plans and lead their teams.

So, here are six keys to ensure you thrive in this new reality.

Lead with Value – Expertise & Insight.

Suggesting catch up calls just won’t cut it anymore. You need to be interesting and engaging, if you want success in setting up virtual meetings with existing and potential clients. The key is to lead with your insights and expertise that are relevant to their current situation and challenges. Then demonstrate early on in your communication how you can add value and keep showing it frequently.

Often salespeople don’t reflect long enough on all their previous experiences, the challenges they helped other clients overcome and the results they’ve created. Leverage this experience to select the interesting topics and relevant content to share. This will make your out-reach communication stand out from the crowd.

In a Nutshell

Give a fresh perspective.
Use your insight, unique expertise and network to educate and expand client’s viewpoint.
Leave them feeling they’ve learned something worthwhile.
This approach gives you earlier and more frequent access to decision makers.
In a virtual environment your value needs to be demonstrated early on and often during the relationship. Focus on helping not selling.
Ask yourself – What will customers learn?
What expertise can you share to help reshape their business?

Recreate Your Sales Content.

Look at your attitude, if you think virtual selling is so much harder than face to face you need to think again. It’s true, it has different challenges, but it also has several major advantages. Firstly, you can create really engaging sales content you can share on your screen in a way that encourages collaboration. This is something you could not easily do in a face to face meeting.

Secondly, you’ll probably need to recreate some of your sales content, you’ll need a specific ‘tool-set’ that is flexible and adaptable for all your virtual interactions. Both for social media, out-reach emails and virtual meetings. Getting this prepared in advance will allow you to be much more effective in a virtual environment, where you only have a few seconds to bring up a relevant slide or play a short impactful video clip during the discussion.

In a Nutshell

Virtual Environments = A More Effective Use of Sales Content.
Seamless demos and presentations guide conversations with an agility that is often not possible in person.
Create a logical interactive pathway that leads the conversation, covers issues, building trust and engagement.
It’s vital to align presentations to both the stage of the buying / sales process and personalize it to the situation.
Create precise content in a useful range to deal with email, social media and web meetings.

Cultivate Networks & Contacts.

It used to be great to visit a prospective client’s office, you were able to get a better understanding of the environment, culture and frequently you’d be introduced to other colleagues. Now you need to do this virtually by developing your network, sharing insights and connecting with people via social media. You will probably find you are in a position to help your clients too by introducing them to relevant peers who share their interests and challenges.

In a Nutshell

Recreate opportunities to leverage your network online.
Facilitate peer to peer relationships via introductions.

Diligently Prepare Your Technology.

One downside to working virtually is that it’s a fairly unforgiving environment if you have technology issues. We’ve probably all been on calls where the meeting’s gone South when someone says, “I’m really sorry it was all working fine earlier I can’t see what’s gone wrong…”. The antidote to these situations is to build into your diary 10mins to do a compete check of your I.T before you start. Create a checklist, to cover, sound quality, volume, lighting, internet connection speed, the background and your personal appearance. Sounds basic, but your professionalism is being judged on every aspect. Make sure you and your team know how to use all the advanced features of your technology to create an engaging experience. Do it right and you gain competitive advantage because the reality is many people just don’t bother and let themselves down unnecessarily. I’ve even had meetings where salespeople have their camera off…can you imagine the impression? Next.

In a Nutshell

Train yourself and your sales team to be experts using your virtual meeting system.
Use a checklist prior to each call to ensure top I.T performance.

Restructure Your Sales Process.

You need to review your sales process, because it’s very likely your customer’s buying process may have adapted significantly since Covid-19.

This means you now have to be more structured in the way you manage opportunities through the pipeline, ensuring you are on the same page and responding appropriately.

It’s your responsibility to create a ‘winning path’. By this I mean your process and presentation must address the interests and concerns of your audience in a logical, easy to follow format. So, keep it simple and above all, ensure the content you share makes it easy for your prospects to confidently take the next step.

Over complicated presentations will require additional work for prospects to unravel, slowing down the decision-making process.

Remember, one of the challenges of working virtually is it’s harder to read the room. You can easily miss vital signals or body language you would have picked up on when face to face.

So, be sure to check-in regularly with everyone in the room to see if they have any questions or reservations and ensure your message is resonating with them.

Then, if you find it isn’t going well don’t be tempted just to plough on regardless. STOP address the concerns or questions. I’d suggest this would be an ideal time to use a virtual Whiteboard, share your screen and sketch out the issues and invite others to collaborate and share their ideas on potential solutions. This is a powerful method to gain engagement and joint ownership of any eventual solution for the client.

Create a Winning Path

In a Nutshell

Make sure your content helps the decision-making process!
Disconnected content requires more energy to sift through and delays someone taking the next step.
In ‘Virtual’ delivery it’s harder to read the room. Continually, confirm that you content is resonating?
If not STOP and make a course correction.

Amazing Virtual Experience = Creating Defining Moments.

When you look back at some of your best client relationships there will always be a series of “defining moments” where the customer evaluated you and decided they wanted a business relationship.

It’s possible to achieve these moments in a virtual environment just as in a physical one. But they don’t occur spontaneously.

So, if you are used to frequent in-person engagement you will need to revisit your process and proactively curate these positive defining moments, the ones you know that create customer intimacy.

Ultimately, whether you are working virtually or in-person selling is reliant on building strong personal relationships based on mutual trust and understanding. That’s never going to change, we’re all still human!

However, by diligently adapting to these ever-changing environments we can still bring incredible value to each other and achieve all our mutual objectives.

If you’d like more in-depth insights on creating your own winning path check out this webinar https://www.linearstructure.com/video/how-to-create-an-outstanding-virtual-customer-experience/

or drop me a line with your thoughts at peter.holland@linearstructure.com and we can continue the conversation.

Here’s to your continued Sales Success!

Peter

Sales Managers – Are You Leveraging the Power of Social Media for Your Team?

Sales managers everywhere realise the power of social media. But often it’s a struggle to leverage this power through the sales team’s activities to ensure it impacts sales results.

In a recent webinar with Sara Pearce of Saffron Pea Media, we discussed several keys to achieve this. In this brief post I’d like to share a few with you and recommend you checkout the live webinar here:

https://www.linearstructure.com/video/how-to-leverage-the-power-of-social-media-for-sales-managers/

It all starts by ensuring your sales and marketing work complement each other. As shown below Marketing / Sales and Customers are intrinsically linked and self-supporting.

As a sales manager you have a multiplying effect which is so much more powerful and can open doors to new opportunities. But to achieve this you need to give clear direction to everyone in your team on the ‘Social Media Sales Process’ you expect them to follow.

Here are just a few steps to include:

Hang out where your contacts hang out. – Pick the channels you want to be on, create a consistent Bio for your team and company.
Focus your Twitter feed by creating lists. Example lists could be targets, media, customers and competitors. This will assist greatly in managing the amount and quality of information you receive.
Browse the contacts of your good connections are there any who you think you could help? Ask your good contacts if it would be worth introducing you.
Join webinars which you think your target audience will attend. And think about a good question to ask at the end to make yourself stand out. This is unique opportunity to network online.
Leverage the CONTENT search and filter by author sector to give you ACTIVE contacts on LinkedIn who may be more open to connections than those who are not active. Comment, like their posts or if appropriate request a connection with a carefully worded invitation text explaining why it would be mutually beneficial to connect.
Sharing knowledge. Use company produced content to send to contacts on LinkedIn “thought this specific article would be interesting to you” would you like to set up Zoom meeting?

These are just a handful of the ideas you can implement to enable everyone on the team to embrace social selling effectively. Click the webinar link above to get the whole story.

What’s next?

At the beginning of this post I mentioned bringing sales and marketing departments together. This alignment doesn’t happen by chance, it has to be well thought out and implemented with enthusiasm and commitment.

But the major benefits in revenue growth have never been more important in today’s economy.

So, in our next live interactive webinar Sara & I will focus on:

‘B2B Smarketing that Drives Revenue Growth’.

Save the date & time Thursday 27^th August 11.00am London Time.

Here’s your invite to register for this impactful event.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0udeqvqTgiG9zFfI3NcaTOSkrTPRjRkvGd

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Dedicated to Your Continued Sales Success!

Peter

How to Strengthen Your Mindset to Thrive in Ambiguity.

Put your own Oxygen Mask on 1^st.

Over the last six months we’ve all been on an emotional rollercoaster. It’s good to acknowledge this fact and the effects uncertainty have on yourself and those around you. In the first few months of the pandemic you were probably reacting on adrenaline and coping with the sudden changes. But now as time passes it is becoming even more important to take care of our own mindset so we can help others to not just survive but thrive in new circumstances.

So, here are 10 tips to create and strengthen a positive mindset.

Acceptance – Allow yourself the space and time to adjust to different circumstances. Feeling fear, anxiety, doubt and stress is a completely normal reaction and this understanding will help you accept your own feelings and the behavior of others.

Resilience – Is vital to maintaining perspective.
Remember you still have:- Ability to provide great value to others.
– Opportunity to pivot & improve.
– Focus on past successes.
– Time now for development.

Energy is key – How you feel mentally and physically is dependent on getting the basics in place.

Adequate Rest
Good Nutrition
Regular Exercise
Hydration + Vit C & D to Boost Immunity.

Socialise – Engage with family and check in regularly with friends and colleagues. The lack of social interaction has been one of the toughest challenges. So, don’t neglect the virtual opportunities you have to engage even if you feel ‘zoomed out’ sometimes!

Chunk your workday. – Many of us will still be WFH a lot in the foreseeable future. To make this work effectively you need to break up your day. Make sure you include taking a walk, exercising, doing errands odd jobs etc. You’ll be more productive if you don’t work back to back all day. Four hours of focused work + plenty of breaks will get you results faster and you’ll be able to sustain momentum over the coming months.

Achievement Routine – This might sound crazy but taking action and achieving even small tasks is vital to having a sense of control. Don’t lounge around. Get up at the same time, make your bed, shower, dress well and schedule 3 daily priorities. Once listed allocate specific time slots during the day to achieve them. These simple steps put you in the right mindset, especially if your WFH motivation is low.

Creative time – Build in time for hobbies, interests, maybe music or sports. Include some personal and professional development. This will keep your mind busy and focused on new positive information.

Limit News Exposure – I think we’ve all realized having constant news feeds on is counterproductive. It saps energy and focus from your positive actions. Just check-in twice a day, you’ll notice the difference in your attitude and don’t worry you’ll still be up to date on the latest events.

Dive into Humour – Watch some comedy each day. What’s your favorite? Friends or Seinfeld, Peter Kay or Dell Boy? Nothing lightens the load faster than a great laugh, preferably with family and friends.

Provide Help & Support to Others – Who can you help? Maybe this should be the number 1 on the action list. Giving generously of your time or resources to help family, friends and others in need helps them. But maybe the greatest gain is the sense of wellbeing you get from being able to help someone that needs your assistance.

The secret to Thriving in Ambiguity…
Focus on Today.

These two men experienced tough times…here’s their wise advice.

“Focus on what you can do, where you are, with what you have right now.”

Theodore Roosevelt

“It is not our goal to see what lies dimly in the distance but to do what clearly lies at hand.”

Thomas Carlisle

I encourage you to checkout this live webinar which dives deeper into this subject with additional ways to help you accelerate your recovery.

https://www.linearstructure.com/video/accelerate-your-recovery-mindset-leadership-to-thrive-in-ambiguity/

“So, put some fresh daily activities in your calendar that will strengthen your mind, body and spirit!”

Dedicated to Your Continued Sales Success!

Peter

6 Top Tips for Growing Your Sales in Tough Times!

If you feel your world has been turned upside down, you’re not alone. But the things that made you a top performer still work. So, focus on what you can do to create value.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

Structure Your Time Effectively.
Step 1. Every morning write a list of the top six most important things you need to get done that day.

Step 2. Plan how much time you will need to complete the task.
Realistically determine how long you need to dedicate to complete each task, this is an important step to ensure the six items can be completed that day. If one or more is too big to complete decide how much time you can dedicate to it each day.

Step 3. Plan the Day.
Be specific have a time slot for each item on your daily calendar.

Step 4. Prioritise. Put the most important task first, early in the day when you have the time, focus and energy. Often people sacrifice major productivity by putting off the tough items till latter and get messed up in ‘busywork’ that is not result-producing activity.

Step 5. Build in flex. Your day will get interrupted so build in some flexibility. Especially, if you’re working from home with kids, so don’t stress take an hour or two to deal with the detour and then get back to your schedule.
Reach out to Existing Clients.
Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder…it makes people forget you.

So, contact all your existing clients preferably by phone and find out how they’re doing. What can you do to support them during this difficult period? Could you share ideas, or approaches that have helped other clients? Are there other services or arrangements you could implement to make life easier for them?
Create Quality Content.
We will get through this and then it will be time not just to ‘re-start’ your business but to relaunch it! So, invest this valuable time to create new offerings, services and marketing content. Update your case studies or White papers that enable you to share valuable insights and expertise with potential clients.
Proactive Prospecting.
Your ability to meet prospects face to face will be severely restricted over the next few months. However, this is not the time to slack off in your prospecting efforts. Actually, it provides you with a unique opportunity to engage with new prospects. Why not share some of the insights and expertise that have helped your best clients get results. In your email suggest a specific time you will call them to follow up to see if the information was useful and relevant. Most people will also be working remotely now and may have a bit more time to do a brief video call. By building in a couple of hours of good prospecting work each day you will start lots of new relationships and create a bank of warm potential clients that are ready for a visit later in the year.
Improve Your Sales Process – CRM
Let’s face it most salespeople don’t relish the task of adding information into CRM. But use this extra time you have now to become more fluent with your system. The better you get a using a CRM system the faster and more productive you’ll become.
Improving this sales process is the quickest way to increase the speed of sales passing through your pipeline, resulting in time for additional sales opportunities.
Develop Yourself & Industry Expertise.
Working from home is challenging, you need to break up your day to include some exercise, fun and humour.
Also include other areas of personal development and achievement.
Ask yourself: What will make me more valuable to clients in 90 days?
What areas of sales do you want to get better at?
What articles could you read, or videos could you watch to increase your industry and sector expertise?
Investing this time now will enable you to differentiate yourself and become even more valuable to people.
Remember We are the Catalyst.
Ultimately, nothing in business moves without a sale.
That means as sales professionals we have the responsibility and duty to support and encourage our clients as they face these challenges.
Our positive attitude and creative approach can make the difference in how they see their situation now and in the near future.

Keep well, stay positive and take care of yourself and others.

Best Regards

Peter

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Are you Coaching by Telling or Asking?

The truth is most sales managers are poor coaches, often it’s just because they never received appropriate training in this key area.

Frequently, after being promoted to sales management for their good sales performance they found their own personal development was not on the company’s agenda.

What’s the impact of this on their sales teams?

A very common outcome is that their ‘coaching’ consists of telling you what you are doing wrong and what you should be doing. Unfortunately, this approach can be very frustrating for everyone involved.

But a significant shift happens when a manager adopts a coaching mentality. They begin to understand the true value of using good questions effectively.

By asking the salesperson questions you can help them to reflect on what is working well and help them determine what they need to do to change their approach.

This gives people ownership of their own development and allows you to help them to raise performance collaboratively.

This takes practice and you may find yourself slipping back into ‘Tell Mode’ so be prepared to refocus and start back using some quality questions again. Keep doing this until it becomes your habitual way of working.

Ultimately, by focusing on Asking VS Telling you enable the salesperson to set their own development and performance goals. And those are the ones they will be motivated to achieve.

Sales Optimisation in a Digital World

In this month’s newsletter I wanted to share with you some of the insights and ideas from the latest Best Practice Sales Optimisation Day.

How to create value and differentiate your business in the digital age were topics discussed at the Furniture Makers’ Best Practice Day, hosted by international office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, earlier this month at their London office.

The day was led by Peter Holland, principal director at Linear Consulting, and Andy Humphreys, regional director – UK & Ireland at Herman Miller, with support from members of the Herman Miller sales team.

Delegates from 10 companies attended the event. They were split into groups and asked to discuss issues and identify areas of best practice within their own businesses.

The 3 challenges that stood out from the group discussions were:

Demonstrating value to create differentiation in a digital world.
Delivering strategy successfully in the field with results.
Managing change with engagement & accountability.

Demonstrating value to create differentiation in a digital world.

In the digital world 67% of the buyer’s journey is on-line (Sirrus) with them only engaging suppliers later in the sales process. These better informed customers still need salespeople but the qualities they value have changed, as demonstrated in the below survey by US based Rain Group.

We found leading with insights, sharing digitally and verbally highly valuable in engaging customers, as part of a cohesive strategy across digital platforms. This is a fundamental change in the way salespeople are working to engage and attract customers. However, only with effective CRM usage can they manage the customer journey professionally.

By using insight and expertise companies can attract the best clients, providing sellers with the opportunity to demonstrate their value and differentiation.

However, key to this level of engagement was the mindset of the salesperson. To create value their knowledge and expertise had to be applyed to the specific circumstances and achievement of the client’s objectives. By crafting compelling solutions, they can take the client on a journey demonstrating how business transformation could be achieved together.

The below image shows how important it is to have an in-depth knowledge of the customer’s business rather than focusing on presenting a product or service offer.

It was interesting to note, that rather than viewing the relationship as simply transactional, the top performing salespeople had a holistic approach to building relationships. For them creating life time clients was of primary importance and their focus was on ensuring the solution was implemented properly and achieved customer results.

Delivering strategy successfully in the field with results.

Fundamental to getting any strategy implemented is its clear communication throughout the company. Our goal is to create a direct link between the results desired in the boardroom with the daily activities taking place in the field.

The essence of thriving sales organisations is their ability to link their strategy, communication and implementation together effectively.

One vital aspect to achieve this is the role played by the Sales Manager. They are the linchpin of the organisation. Taking the Strategy – ‘What we will do’ and communicating into the Tactical – ‘How we will do it’. This allows their sales team to effectively implement it in their daily sales activities.

An effective tool to achieve this is the ROAM Action Plan.

By reverse engineering your sales process you can create a chain of events.

Business Results – linked to >
Sales Objectives – linked to >
Sales Activities – linked to >
Sales Metrics – to measure activities & results.

This one-page document transforms your business plan from a heavy document often rarely reviewed, into a weekly / monthly Action Plan that creates visibility and control over the implementation process. It also affords you the ability to make mid-course corrections if required, rather than waiting till the end of the year to see if your strategy succeeded!

Managing change with engagement & accountability.

Challenge

Managing change and getting buy-in from staff is a challenge. The group felt that engagement was best achieved when staff were involved in the process and had a level of ownership over the implementation of any changes.
However, creating this engagement and a high level of accountability was an ongoing challenge.

Solution

The below diagram shows a process to manage change effectively. People need help and support as the move from the ‘Current State’ through the ‘Ambiguous Zone’ of change until they reach the new ‘Desired State’.
A vital factor is step 4. Demonstrate the Right Support.

Often Sales Managers are not good coaches, due to a lack of investment to train them in professional coaching methods. To provide the right support and get accountability this must be implemented.

Impact & Results

We found engaging staff in the change process, produces a sense of ownership and engagement. By following the Accountability Pyramid process and coaching professionally sales organisations record an average 19% increase in sales results.

https://hbr.org/2011/01/the-dirty-secret-of-effective

Coaching Issues and Solutions.

Several salespeople in our group commented that the five issues listed below really resonated with their experience of coaching in the field.

They were keen that sales managers take these points onboard and invest in developing their own coaching ability.

It is well documented that coaching is the number one activity sales managers can do to increase performance.

However, the definition of sales ‘coaching’ varies widely. With many salespeople left disconcerted by their managers efforts.

So, here are the five coaching errors we discussed.

Not Personalised.
One size fits all, where the manager makes everyone work on the same specific area.
No Action Plan.
There’s no plan of action after each session with 1 or 2 points for the salesperson to work on.
No Focus.
They focus on too many things to improve at the same time.
Not consistent.
Coaching is just another item on the To Do List, managers fail to realise it’s importance so they don’t make it a priority.
No Accountability.
When the manager doesn’t link the field visit sessions to what the salesperson is supposed to be improving on, they’re not accountable.

In Conclusion

My thanks to Andy Humphreys and Chris Dixon at Herman Miller for an insightful and impactful event and to all our delegates for their valuable contributions to the day. I’d like to encourage a sales audit of these three areas in your business to see the impact you can create on results. If you’d like further resources or to continue the conversation, drop me an email at peter.holland@linearstructure.com I’d be glad to hear your comments.

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Rapidly Grow Your Sales with a Sharper Sales Process!

Can you show me your sales process?

Often when you ask sales managers this question they give you some sort of verbal description. They explain how their leads are produced, followed up by the sales team and orders managed.

However, ask them to provide a diagram of the process and you often get a blank look, it doesn’t exist.

Without an accurate visual there is no way to fully understand the process, making it difficult to explain to staff. It also leads to an even bigger issue, in the words of Lord Calvin, “If you can’t measure it, can’t improve it.”

So, your sales process must be properly mapped out to enable you to measure it and improve it.

This will involve investing some time, mapping out each of the steps and several departments will usually need to be consulted.

So why bother?
The fastest way to increase your sales is to improve your sales process.
If you can speed up the time it takes for a sales opportunity to pass through your system the more time you will have to dedicate to new sales opportunities, creating additional sales.

Simply put, you’ll be working smarter not harder with improved results.

Senior management often feel they do have a good understanding of the process and may be tempted to complete it themselves. But perception and reality can vary wildly. A company’s sales process tends to evolve unconsciously over time with different staff being involved and new activities being introduced. That’s why it’s a smart idea to involve the people actually doing the daily workload to be part of the mapping process.

Managers are often surprised to find that in reality people are duplicating actions or they have developed ‘work arounds’ because the current I.T infrastructure isn’t supporting them properly.

Let me share with you a recent example. Last year I worked with a large and well-established organisation that were looking to purchase a new CRM system. They had the foresight to map out their sales process prior to approaching vendors with their requirements.

What did this analysis reveal?
Firstly, they found gaps in the information being shared between departments. This was causing duplicative work and poor communication. Secondly, they significantly reduced the time to process membership applications by eliminating redundant steps in the approval process. This improved the onboarding experience for new members and greatly reduced the involvement and time required from senior management.

The CRM company selected for the project commended them for the quality of their sales process maps. They commented that they wished every client would perform this task as it had saved a significant amount of time and eliminated the potential for mistakes during the development and implementation process.

It is possible to complete this sales process mapping internally. However, there is a distinct advantage in having an independent person assist. They provide a more objective perspective, being unbiased they can push back on any assumptions and challenge the established ways of working to reveal the reality of the situation.

Once you have mapped out all the steps accurately and validated them with your departments, there is one more step worth taking.

Ask your customers what they think of your process. Are you easy to deal with?

You might find the process works really well for you but there are a few areas you could improve to make it a superb experience for your customers!
Without a ‘Sales Process Map’ you’re in the dark and making improvements at best will be guesswork.

However, once you have it in place, it’s like a blueprint you can use continually to review, adapt and improve performance.

Ultimately, you will have gained an in-depth understanding of how you deliver value to your customers, and that’s an investment worth making!

If you’d like some more input or examples of how you can map your own process effectively please drop me an email at peter.holland@linearstructure.com and I’ll be happy to share some additional resources.

How to Ensure Your 2020 Business Plan Get Results? – 5 Keys for Successful Growth.

This time of year, business leaders are starting to implement their strategy for 2020.

They know they can’t leave this implementation to chance. Their competitors will be doing the same and no doubt looking to take their market share!

Your strategy may be good but often it’s the implementation that is all wrong.

That’s because there is no clear communication between what the management board expects in terms of business results and the daily activities in the field.

Here are 5 keys to create a powerful business plan implementation.

Customer Involvement. The critical person in the success of your plan is your customer. Have you discussed with them where you can add value? How can you best support their growth objectives next year? What existing or new service do they really need? Or more importantly, can you anticipate what they will need using your expertise to help them reach their objectives?
A live working document. Most business plans even the good ones are not referred to or adjusted frequently enough. Often only being revisited annually or bi-annually with little impact on the day to day priorities. The formal business plan needs to be transferred to an abbreviated action plan format that is regularly referred to and tracked to monitor progress.
Include Sales Objectives. If your business plan only outlines the business results desired, you need to add specific sales objectives that show ‘ how ‘ these results will be achieved. This is the critical link to ensure everyone implements the same sales strategy and not their own personal interpretation!
Specific Sales Activities. The business plan does not include the specific sales activities that link directly to the achievement of the chosen sales objectives. These activities are vital to communicate to your sales team. So, they know precisely what they need to do on a daily basis to hit the objectives.
Activity Based Sales Metrics. If you only review business results, sales, revenue, turnover or margin you are missing a trick! This type of business plan only measures business results. But that won’t tell you how you created those results. You must have metrics designed to measure your key sales activities. This will help you see how the results were achieved and give you valuable visibility, ensuring accountability and control over the strategy implementation.

Including these 5 elements will create a business plan that is focused on adding real value to the customer. Engages the sales team with a clear action plan and gives management visibility and control over how the results are being achieved month by month.

Now you have an implementation plan to delivery and exceed your 2020 goals!

If you would like to chat about creating this type of implementation drop me an email, this is a sharing platform where we are all learning and growing. peter.holland@linearstructure.com