Sales efficiency analysis - case study

Christmas party. I met this entrepreneur between two mulled wine. Well, not me as I don't drink alcohol anymore. But the atmosphere was merry and Christmas jumpers were in full swing. After a brief conversation, we got to the topic os ales and his worries about his sales team. Following a few questions, we agreed that it was worth looking under the bonnet of what was going on. This proved to be, yet again, another example demonstrating why training sales people isn't necessarily the right answer when the revenue engine of an organisation is failing or not delivering to the level it should.

First of all, one important consideration. What I too often see in sales organisation is a sales manager and a leadership who don't know clearly what the role of sales management is. Too often a sales manager has been promoted as an ex good sales person. With no prior knowledge of what it entails. Yet as sales is a unique function, the role of a sales manager is unique. There are four key parts of what a sales manager need to do and which drives his success.

1. Accountability. Making sure there is an alignment between what people say they will do and what they do. It's key to their success. It's a key pillar of a powerful sales culture.

2. Motivating. Understand what motivates them, what is driving the fire in the belly. And knowing if money or excellence is driving them. And no, the best sales reps aren't coin operatred

3. Coaching. Making sure they are not rescuing their people, which is what so many SM do. But that they coach them in a structured manner on multiple facets.

4. Recruiting. Turnover is typically high in a sales team so a sales manager needs to be constantly on the look out for robust A-Player. They rarely build a bench. When they should.

So, let's look at the finding of this specific team. First let's look at how this sales manager fares in these four pillars of his role which is detailed below. The circle is the competency of this sales manager as assessed through the sales analytics approach. On the right of it, in the triangle, it's the efficiency of that skill

We can't help but wonder: why?

Firstly, it clearly shows that the competencies of coaching are at around 57. Not brilliant. But not too catastrophic. Yet, the actual efficiency, as perceived by the team is lower. 33. Something is on the way of how he uses his coaching skills. What could this be? Another concern is motivation. Motivating people is critical for a sales manager. There is a need to constantly motivate sales people. But he is very poor at it. This is a big alarm bell.

Now, let's kook at the sales capability of the team. Whilst the labels of the graph are in French, we can see that the team is poor in reaching decision makers and in consultative selling. Yet, looking at the sales manager capabilities, that's an area he is very strong at. Isn't it bizarre that a sales manager, strong at consultative selling has a team that is poor at it? For context, it's worth stating that the team has been in place for quite a few years. This isn't a new situation. He had the opportunity to transfer his skills. But didn't.

[caption id="attachment_87929" align="aligncenter" width="840"]                                                                       Sales team capabilities[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_87930" align="aligncenter" width="840"]                                                             Sales management capabilities[/caption]

We're starting to see that one of the root cause of the issue of this founder I met while enjoying a Christmas party is the sales management in place. So would the solution be simply training him on coaching? And on motivating. Certainly this would make sense. Yet would this be enough. Isn't there something more deeply rooted in this sales manager that would prevent the training to actually "stick".

Let's look into the coaching environment and what this sales team as a whole thinks. Again, the results are in French here but what we are seeing is that, putting it bluntly, this sales manager doesn't believe his team respect him. When they actually do. And he doesn't believe they trust him. When they actually do...

And when we probe the limiting beliefs of this sales manager, we identify some worrying ones. The screenshot below is in French but this sales manager declares that

• He doesn't need to manage daily activities of his team (so a poor accountability culture)

• He doesn't need to know what motivates his sales people, despite motivation being a pilar of his role

• He doesn't need to develop his sales team, when coaching is key to success

• Improve self esteem isn't one of his priority, when it should be

These findings are clear. There is a mindset issues. A self-limiting belief issue. And some competencies issues. This needed to be tackled on on an urgent basis, with the support of the leadership. Few options were tabled:

1. the leadership was prepared to change something in what they expected the sales manager to do (in that case, he was carrying a large quota which prevented him to focus on his team)

2. the leadership was prepared to help the manager with training and coaching focused on the beliefs he held that was preventing him to perform in his role

3. The leadership wasn't prepared to wait and a search would have to be initiated to bring in a robust sales manager that wasn't hindered by his "headtrash" and sales management competencies.

Bottom line? This is one of the many examples that are coming out of a sales efficiency and improvement analysis. And, yet again, proves that while training sales people and sales manager is a way to raise the bar, throwing money at training without understanding the underlying issue could be self-defeating.