Written by Rob Malec

www.robmalec.com

I recently came across the most simple and elegant formula I’ve ever encountered that cracks the elusive code of increasing the revenue that you as a business owner can generate from the total of your team’s marketing, sales, and business development efforts.

I encountered this in Timothy Gallwey’s excellent book The Inner Game of Work (the entire Inner Game Series is excellent and well worth your time).

An adaption of his formula for improving work performance applied to sales and revenue generation looks something like this:

Sales Performance = sales potential minus sales inhibitors

Here’s how this applies in the real world from my perspective as a B2B Fractional VP of Sales…

To Increase Sales, You Must First Understand Your Sales Performance

Leadership must clearly define the specifics of sales performance so that the team knows exactly what productivity level (and in which KPIs) needs to be achieved. Given that Revenue Generated is a lagging indicator (it reflects what has already happened), you also need Leading Indicators (projections of what is likely to happen).

The classic trap is to not have Sales Activity and Results leading indicator KPIs in place. When this is the case, leadership can’t confirm on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis what direction the sales ship is going in and at what speed.

Your sales activity leading indicator KPIs should include:

• # of Sales Leads in your sales funnel at any given time
• # of Sales Leads that have been contacted by your business development folks
• # of buyer-facing sales meetings conducted each week
• # of buyer-facing sales meetings scheduled for the upcoming weeks
• # of viable sales opportunities and corresponding revenue in the deal funnel

Looking at this list of leading indicator KPIs, it’s easy to see that predicting your incoming revenue reliably and predictably is possible if you’ve enacted them. All of these are the things that cause sales to happen. If by week one or two of the month, these KPIs are trending down, you will likely have a dry spell coming up but will still have time to course correct.

Working with your team to ensure that they keep the pace on hitting these KPIs is a continual coaching and training endeavour that has a direct ROI when followed diligently.

The key lagging indicator, Revenue Generated, needs to be clearly articulated as well. What is the revenue required by a sales professional, in what time period, and at what margin for each product? Clarity here will help ensure that your sales team is focused on generating the type of results that will keep your business healthy and poised for increasing sales and growth.

Consider Your Team’s Sales Potential to Increase Sales

Think of your top sales performer who regularly overachieves on their sales plan. Imagine if you could hire a few more folks who are dialled up just like they are—how great life would be! When building your team, hire wisely (for more information on how to do so click here.)

If you have a legacy team, sales potential can be assessed by looking at past performance and putting that beside the traits and characteristics your salespeople possess. This will allow you to determine if they have what it takes to be successful in selling within your market.

The reason for looking at both sides of this equation is that a person who performed poorly in the past may simply need some help getting unstuck to unlock their sales ability.

Be Aware of Sales Inhibitors That Prevent You From Increasing Sales

Things that get in the way of revenue generation success for a salesperson can be either internal or external.

Internal Sales Inhibitors

Internal inhibitors include things like mindset, an adequate knowledge base (both in product and sales approach), and the skill to apply all of this.

The salesperson whose mindset is to take it personally when a buyer says “no” to them will never succeed. They will drown in their bad feelings.

The salesperson whose mindset is “I can’t sell because of [insert external force acting upon them here],” will also never succeed. It’s rare that the stars align, market conditions are ideal, competitive pressure is low, and your company is operating like a well-oiled machine. The best salespeople adapt and deal with adversity effectively rather than looking for excuses for poor performance.

External Sales Inhibitors

External sales inhibitors are things in your company that are getting in the way of selling that you can change. Things that get in the way of selling include:

• Unclear sales goals
• A lack of sales coaching
• Overly complex sales compensation plans
• Production plans not matched to sales plans
• Administrative processes that make setting up new customers and placing of orders onerous

Most often these are the types of things that business owners can control or highly influence to find a solution. At your company, determining what these issues might be is as simple as asking your sales team. It’s my guess they will respond loudly and quickly when asked, “What types of things do we need to fix in order to make closing of sales easier for you?”.

Applying the Formula to Increase Sales

Assess your sales team and grade each seller on their Sales Potential.  The simplest way to do this is to take an inventory of the traits and characteristics of your best salespeople and measure all others against this standard. There are also many paid inventories out there that can help you.

This assessment will tell you whether or not you have the team in place that can achieve the revenue generation success required to take your business to the next level. It may be that you have the raw material for success but require some process optimization and training to bring the best out of your folks.

On the other hand, it might be that you have the wrong people in the sales seats on your bus. If that’s the case, you can then strategize appropriately how to get the right people in. Then, ask a question of your sales team about what roadblocks to selling exist.

Inventory those, set them up and knock them down one by one by addressing and resolving them. This will likely involve multiple stakeholders across multiple departments, and (sadly) not be a fast process. It will, however, definitely be worth the time and effort when it ultimately helps you improve revenue generation.

As with all things, there is nuance to cracking the code of how to increase sales. If you would like to chat about this further, please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]

Written by Rob Malec

www.robmalec.com

Using a sales coach might seem counterintuitive when the sales team reports directly to the business owner or sales manager. Consider a sales coach to be a force multiplier with a clearly identifiable ROI. If you want to increase revenue generation rapidly, then it’s time to engage the services of a sales coach.

Why Use a Sales Coach?

Here are a few specific signs to look out for when trying to answer the question, ‘Do I need to hire a sales coach?’.

1. The Business Owner is too Busy to Coach

If you are an early-stage business, it is likely you don’t have a sales manager. It’s also likely that you are wearing ten different hats and working eight days a week. Fires crop up, shiny objects appear, and you get pulled in many different directions on a minute-by-minute basis.

Effective sales coaching requires prep time, in-session focus, and post-session follow-up. Despite best intentions, overstretched business owners often just don’t have the bandwidth to apply to this task. It’s important to know when you need a sales manager.

2. The Sales Manager is too Busy to Coach

You may wonder, isn’t it the sales manager’s job to coach? Technically, yes. Practically, it can be a challenge. Much like the business owner, the sales manager may also be pulled in many directions.

Marketing, production, delivery, and accounting all vie for simultaneous attention – and may have been folded into the sales manager’s job role description. To some degree, knowing how to set your sales manager up for success can help. Even if you do so, rising sales team headcounts make coaching tough to accomplish. Beyond a head count of five salespeople, any sales manager is hard-pressed to meet their minimum weekly coaching goals.

3. Sales Managers May Lack Proven Methodology and Processes to be Effective Sales Coaches

The newly minted sales manager may be new to their role and still cutting their teeth. Identifying a sticking point with a salesperson or a sales process element is one thing but creating and seamlessly integrating an elegant solution is another.

Even experienced sales managers may not have all systems and processes documented. The absence of this infrastructure makes effective sales coaching difficult. It becomes tips and tactics focused rather than process & methodology focused. This results in the need for sales process and methodology training to be procured, which can be expensive.

4. Sales Managers and Business Owners May Not Be Good Teachers

We have all had excellent teachers in our lifetime – that person who “reaches us” and helps us break through a plateau. We have all also had teachers who were patently unsuccessful at doing so – and you’ve probably felt the frustration of investing time that you will never get back into a learning experience.

It’s often the case that the high-performing salesperson is promoted to sales manager. The logic is that because they can perform well, they can teach it to others. This logic is flawed. Because someone is a solid performer does not mean they are a good teacher or even enjoy teaching. Learning how to be an excellent sales teacher is necessary to get the coaching results you desire.

5. The Sales Team May Need More Bandwidth Than Those Parties Have Available to Commit

There are ways to be effective and efficient when implementing sales coaching. However, it is still time intensive. If the sales team is green, they will need a significant amount of coaching time in order to ramp up their productivity.

If the product or solution being sold is complex, the team will need focused attention being given to sales strategy creation learning. If ownership or sales management are busy in the ways outlined above, the time they have available to put into sales coaching simply may not be enough.

6. You Can’t Be a Prophet in Your Own House

You may have one of your team members come to you with a great new idea they heard from someone outside the organization, which turns out to be the exact same idea you had given them ten times before!

Objectivity and sound thinking packaged in a new way can be exciting and invigorating for a sales team. When sound ideas come from outside the organization, they have a level of street cred that homegrown ideas are not always afforded. This is yet another reason to hire a sales coach.

Is Sales Coaching Expensive?

Engaging the services of a sales coach does not need to be expensive. There are all manner of sales coaches to meet just about every learning need and training budget. Given the ROI on sales coaching services is so easily measured, you will quickly see if your investment is returning dividends.

You may even consider using a sales coach whose compensation is directly tied to the revenue the sales team generates. Such a commission program is natural, provides a clear incentive for all parties, and makes your sales coaching arrangement self-funding.

In my role as a Fractional VP of Sales, I’ve seen how effective sales coaching can transform businesses into predictable revenue-generating machines. If you’d like to discuss how sales coaching might be helpful for your organization, please feel free to contact me.

Written by Rob Malec

www.robmalec.com

Your sales team has been absolutely crushing it for 3 years and running. Does this mean it’s time to sit back and relax knowing they’ve got things under control? On the contrary, you want to focus on encouraging a high-performing sales team to continually improve to achieve peak performance.

How to Motivate Already High-Performing Salespeople to Achieve Peak Performance

As a Fractional VP Sales and Sales Coach, I have been presented with this happy challenge many times. When a sales team has been over-performing for several years in a row, the forward-thinking business owner knows that complacency is always lurking in the weeds.

To do nothing and hope for the best only to have complacency rear its ugly head would be a poor choice. Yet, there is always a fear of upsetting the apple cart and the feeling that it might be better to do nothing and hope the revenue curve keeps going up and to the right.

It has been my direct experience that doing nothing is a bad option. Complacency will ultimately set in even among your best salespeople. Or your top performers will feel they have hit the ceiling of their growth at your company and decide to move on. Here are a few things you can consider if you are in the enviable position to have a well-tenured, high-performing sales team to help them reach peak performance.

Examine Your Compensation Program

Does your compensation arrangement incentivize the right behaviour in your salespeople? Will it serve your company well into the future, or does it reflect behaviours that were correct five years ago?

Consider adjusting your compensation program to financially motivate your salespeople to continue bringing in the type of business that will increase sales and drive revenue growth in the years to come. If compensation is capped, consider uncapping it so that the team can increase their income if they bring in the right amount and type of revenue.

Educate Your Salespeople (Including Thinking Outside of the Box)

Top performers continually want to sharpen their saw. Not sure what kind of training would benefit both them and your business? Ask them what types of skills or knowledge development they would like that they believe will help them to sell more.

Strongly consider offering access to training outside of sales platform skills. Storytelling, improv, and mindfulness training are examples of subject matter that will positively impact your team’s sales abilities, despite not being specifically focused on the sales function. When you’re dealing with top performers, you need to expand your horizons to help them reach peak performance.

Talk About Achieving Peak Performance

Achieving peak performance levels and working towards mastery is an honourable pursuit in and of itself. People who are not challenged get bored. The road to complacency is paved with boredom.

A quick Google of “peak performance” will give you more information and training options than you can digest related to getting on the path to mastery. Choose the one that’s right for your team and start to walk down the path together.

There is a significant amount to consider when determining the best way to energize an already high-performing sales team to increase sales. If you would like some insight into how, please feel free to reach out to me directly.

Written by Rob Malec

www.robmalec.com

The other day, I asked a business owner, “How many existing customers are in your database?”

Their answer was 2500.

“Other than your top 25 customers, how often do you touch base with the rest?”

Their answer? “We haven’t touched base with them in years”.

When it comes to easy money from sales, there is no mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It is an actual pot of gold and it is sitting inside of your existing customer base in the form of uncovered and unaddressed pain points and needs.

Mining Your Existing Customer Database is the Key to Easy Money

Some business owners get so focused on bringing on new customers (which is expensive and slow) that they forget to mine their current customer database for new revenue (much cheaper and faster).

The Customer Success function of today is the Account Management function of yesteryear. Where the two differ is that the Customer Success function exists not only to maintain current customers and keep them happy but also to serve a purposeful revenue generation function.

Account Management used to involve a few dedicated staff focused on handling inbound customer service requests. Every now and then a customer would call with a burning need and something additional would get sold to them, but otherwise it was a reactive job role.

True Customer Success involves several core proactive process components that, when followed, transform your department from a headcount expense into a profit centre. Here are 5 important strategies to make easy sales…

1. Get the Right People in the Right Seats on the Bus

The best candidate for a Customer Success Representative is a person who both loves to serve clients and is comfortable with making outbound calls to current customers. The purpose of these calls is to ensure that customers are happy and probe for new sales opportunities.

A person who is only comfortable fielding inbound calls and loses sleep at the thought of having to make outbound calls will not be successful as a Customer Success Representative. Assess the competencies of your team and ensure that your Customer Success Representatives are fit for their roles. If you find gaps, reshuffle your team or bring on staff as necessary to ensure this function is filled.

2. Make it Clear to the Customer Success Team Where the Bus is Going, and Where it’s Not

The job role of the Customer Success Representative is to a) handle inbound customer requests and resolve any service concerns and, b) systematically reach out to existing customers to determine their satisfaction level and whether they have unmet pain points or needs that the company can address.

When unmet pain points and/or needs are identified, this opportunity is then handed back to the sales team to lead the customer through the sales process and close the business. The role of the Customer Success Representative is only to identify sales opportunities and then hand them off to sales, not to conduct a sales process and close the deal themselves.

3. Provide Your People With a Roadmap to Get to Where You Need Them to Go

The process flow for your Customer Success function is not complex. The best systems are simple, making them easy to follow and get the results you want. The process flow can be as simple as this:

• Segment your current customer base by size or strategic importance into the categories of A, B, C, and D. Decide on the frequency with which each category of customer will be contacted.
• Prepare a list of questions aimed at understanding the customers’ current level of satisfaction with your company and then uncover any unmet pain points and needs they are interested to have addressed by your company.
• Use your CRM to schedule and track the outcomes of these conversations. Set up a simple process by which any sales opportunities identified can be seamlessly handed over to the sales department.

4. Track the Journey and Measure Progress

Set up KPIs to track all Customer Success meetings conducted and the outcomes.  The no-brainers to begin with are Net Promoter Scores (NPS), new sales opportunities uncovered, and revenue closed. Depending on your specific goals, you may want to track additional KPIs to see how your team is doing.

5. Provide Your Team With the Tools They Need for Success

Your Customer Success team will need a CRM to remind them when to reach out to existing customers and capture notes on those interactions. They may need a project management application to help them track any problem-resolution projects that arise out of these calls. You will also need a mechanism to capture NPS scores and a dashboard to share the results among stakeholders.

With these steps in mind, there is some nuance to setting up a productive Customer Success function so you can ensure you don’t miss out on easy money. If you’d like to learn more about how to do this in your business, please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].

Written by Rob Malec

Any way you slice it, being a business owner is tough. The responsibilities and stress of keeping the ship on course and meeting payroll every week can be daunting. Doing this while maintaining an even keel and being an effective leader is no small feat. When it comes to how to be a great boss, there’s no big secret. But there are a few simple mindset tips to follow to help you stay on track…

6 Tips From a Fractional VP of Sales to Help You Be a More Effective Sales Leader

How to Be a Great Boss Tip #1: Keep Your Ego in Check

A healthy ego is required for long-term business success. It takes considerable self-confidence to transform an idea into a business and then nurture it in a way that leads to sustainable growth. However, bad things start to happen when this ego morphs into the realm of an “I am the boss, dammit!” approach.

When your ego is unchecked, staff become deferential and work to serve your ego more than the business or its customers. Team morale drops. At best, people feel uneasy, and at worst, they feel fearful.

I have dealt with business owners like this and have experienced first-hand the profound negative effects on staff when the boss’s ego runs loose. A good long look in the mirror is the simple test for business owners to determine where their ego falls on the continuum between self-confidence and “I am the boss, dammit!” exclamation.

How to Be a Great Boss Tip #2: Communication is Key…But the Right Amount at the Right Time

It is understood that there are many aspects of running a business that would not be appropriate to share with all staff (mergers, acquisitions, potential staff layoffs, new product launches, opening of new markets and the like are examples that come to mind).

However, I’ve experienced business owners who take the approach of leaving their people totally in the dark. In these situations, it’s very difficult for them to understand what the guardrails are for exercising their discretion as they execute on their duties and tasks each day.

I have observed business owners who took the opposite approach of telling staff too much, too early.  This left staff feeling very uneasy about the future – to the point of causing some of the top performers to leave the company.

To be an effective leader, you should build a thoughtful communication plan that lets your staff know what they need to know, when they need to know it.

How to Be a Great Boss Tip #3: Provide the Right Tools to Your Team

When asking a team to perform, the leader’s job is to provide the tools necessary. A carpenter without a hammer is hard-pressed to be productive. Similarly, a salesperson without a well-configured CRM is equally as hard-pressed to be productive.

Being thoughtful and including your team in conversations about what tools are required will exponentially increase job role efficiency and effectiveness. This does not mean that the tools need to be elaborate or expensive. On the contrary, frequently surveying the landscape of options and choosing sales tools that will meet the needs of the team is more effective than buying the “biggest and best” and presuming it will cure all ills.

How to Be a Great Boss Tip #4: Pay Your People What They Deserve

When speaking with business owners who experience high staff turnover, a common thread I have noticed is that they pay their people a salary that is below the market rate. Paying your people well does not mean overpaying.

Survey the market and be on par with or a little bit above the going rate for your various staff positions. If you need a way to fund pay increases, raise your prices. When it comes to employees, you get what you pay for and paying at or a bit above market rate will help you retain good performers. Of course, pay is not the only piece of the puzzle when it comes to retaining your top sales performers. But it is an important one and holding on to your top performers will save you money in the long haul.

How to Be a Great Boss Tip #5: Pay Your People on Time

In my work as a Fractional VP of Sales, I’ve seen more than a few companies that fail to pay out employee bonuses and commissions on time. Nothing annoys employees more than being paid late. The most effective business owners I have met have bonus programs that are simple to assess and affordable to implement. They are calculated and paid out on time, every time. Meeting this commitment to your staff is an overt way to say, “I value your contribution”.

How to Be a Great Boss Tip #6: Show Your Appreciation

I’ve never met anyone who has said, “I wish my boss would stop telling me what a great job I am doing!”. Showing gratitude and appreciation on a daily basis as you walk down the hall is a simple way for a business owner to spread the love and have employees know that they are valued. Institutionalizing this in reward and recognition programs is a more formal way to ensure that staff know the company sees their contributions and appreciates them.

There is a great deal of nuance to being an effective leader. I have mentored many executives to help them navigate the path to being effective leaders. If you have a leadership challenge you would like to discuss, please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]