Glance, one of the software tools in my Sales Stack, introduced a very interesting Sales 2.0 concept in their post on Building a Custom Sales 2.0 Toolkit. They framed it in the analogy of the more traditional software stack. My simple definition: the combination of multiple software to create a full-featured, consistent, and stable platform on which you can build solutions.

I think they created a very useful analogy. It structures our thinking on how to enable our sales objectives, not just chase hope-filled sales tools. Using this framework you can quickly identify and setup your sales 2.0 platform and get to selling, confident you have the tools and the platform you need to win.

Here’s a peek into my Sales Stack:

1. Lead Generation: It’s always nice to have a steady flow of new conversations coming into your sales pipeline. Online lead generation is a great way to automate that consistent flow. For me I use a tight combination of blogs (Sales, Lead Buying, Lead Generation), eBooks, and email marketing for demand generation.

Specifically, I use the following software tools:

• WordPress – Some still think WordPress is simply blogging software. I submit that it is a feature-rich, but easy to use and maintain content management system. Don’t just run your blog on it run your entire website on it. Make it your lead generation foundation and home base.
• Thesis (WordPress Template) - Thesis is the WordPress theme that I use [affiliate link] on all my lead generation websites. Again, it is more than a theme. It’s a foundation for good design and SEO. A simple, unmodified base install will get you ahead of 90% of the websites out there in terms of clean design and traffic generating search engine optimization. It gets your lead generation game started with good fundamentals.
• AWeber – I’m continually amazed at how many people neglect this critical component of traffic generation and lead generation. Email marketing is still, hands-down, the most responsive Internet marketing technique. If you don’t have a mailing list start one today. If you start one use AWeber [affiliate link].

2. Prospecting & Sales Intelligence: Attracting sales prospects and generating demand is one channel of opportunities. However, I think you also need to actively engage your market. This means seeking out those prospects that need your products and services, but simply don’t know it yet. That’s right, cold calling. This part of the sales stack also prepares you with better pre-call/pre-appointment preparation.

These are the tools I use:

• Google - Surprised? You shouldn’t be Google is probably the most incredible advance in sales prospect since the telephone. I think of Google as my interface to an enormous database of sales prospects [grab my PDF on Google prospecting]  just waiting to be discovered. My clients are continually providing data and information about themselves, their preferences, their needs, and their wants. Selling to them is as simple as segmenting their data and engaging in their own dialogue.
• Linkedin – A big part of any sales person’s success is networking. Linkedin is the de facto giant in networking business people and is my default database for B2B sales prospecting. It allows me to find and analyze companies and individuals I want to engage. It also does a fair job of generating new leads, with a few special Linkedin tricks I use.
• Gist - This is one of the latest tools I’ve added to my sales stack. Gist is a simple way to keep me aware of what my relationships are doing in pursuing their own interests and goals. Using their direct interface and the plug-in for my email I never go into a conversation with a lead or contact without a quick snapshot of their latest activities in social media. As an extra bonus it gives me the opportunity to help them more efficiently, if I see them promoting or requesting something I can assist with on the spot.
• Twitter - People needing immediate help are turning to their social networks. This provides great “targets of opportunity” for sales. And there is nowhere better to find these than on Twitter. I continually jump into discussions and conversations that net new relationships and sales via Twitter. Twitter is always a great place to gather a little intel on the personality of people you are planning to call or meet with–making breaking the ice much easier on cold calls and meetings.

3. Sale Enablement & Execution: At this point in your sales process you have a few prospects on the hook. Now you have to convince them to move forward. This is where the good conversation happens–telephone calls, face-to-face meetings, web demonstrations or webinars. In my business, I do a lot of showing, helping, and teaching. That means making contact and sharing.

Here is how I share:

• Glance - I mentioned Glance at the top of this article, but they need a prominent mention in my Sales Stack as well. I’ve used all the regulars WebEx and GoToMeeting, but most have failed me regularly. Demonstrations are so critical to the Web 2.0 sales process and I often find myself giving impromptu demos. Doing a quick on-the-spot demos really shows off how well you know your stuff or have a software product that immediately adds value. Glance makes this simple. It works in all browsers, on all operating systems, and its simple URLs make it easy to give over the phone–getting my prospect and me quickly into a sale demo.
• Skype - This is an old stand-by that I find creeping back into a more significant role again. Much of my company is virtual (we hire where the talent is–sort of silly to do it any other way, right?) so this is our primary means of communication. However, as our business grows I find myself engaging more internationally and Skype is really the simplest and most universal way to do this.
• Google Voice – Much of my time is spent with clients and traveling. I certainly don’t want to have prospects waiting on me to get back to a desk phone in my office. So, I long-ago abandoned that relic and replaced it with Google Voice. Now my leads and prospects come to me wherever I am and get my live voice, not a voicemail. This is a powerful sales converter in this world of voicemail roulette.
• Twitter – Again, Twitter pops into the stack. Twitter has become an increasingly primary means of communication, fitting in with email and phone. I am just as responsive to a prospect or client here as I would be in these more tradition modes of communication. However, I like the advantage of being able to share valuable (and lead generating) discussions beyond just one person. If I’m giving free advice or counsel away, which often the initial contact involves, I want as big an audience as possible–that’s lead generation! This is why I try to have much of my initial conversations with suspects on Twitter.
• iPhone - This has become my communication command center. Since I spend as much time as possible away from the office. This is the nerve center for email, telephone, Twitter, Linkedin, and Gist. I can manage it all from this little workhorse.

4. Lead Management & Nurturing: Not every lead or even contact turns into a sale (at least not immediately) that where lead management is a secret weapon. Getting every one of your leads into a lead management system and learning to automate the nurturing process is a huge competitive edge.

This is even more significant when you generate many of your leads online. These leads are generally new suspects–they rarely close quickly. In addition, these leads will be at all stages of the buying cycle. Without lead management it will be impossible to manage any reasonable amount of these diverse prospects.

I use (of course) Kaleidico’s Sales Manager. It was one of those “scratch your own itch” projects and has become even more powerful with a strong, serious sales customer base.

Building a solid Sales Stack is critical in a Web 2.o sales world. There is so much data and the prospects coming from online sources are so diverse–you need help. Take some time today and carefully evaluate your Sales Stack–cut what you don’t need and integrate what you have into a seamless sales process.

What’s in your Sales Stack? Can you help me improve mine? I would appreciate the feedback.

I received a lot of feedback on my post encouraging you not to buy lead management software. That may sound a bit peculiar from a guy that earns his living selling lead management software. However, as I said, numbers don’t lie.

Chris Johnson, one of my favorite freelancers and sales cold callers, and I got into a chat about this. He’s doing his own Flat Rate Web Jobs start-up (clever concept) and trying to make it grow. He made this comment, “the hardest time for a bootstrapper I think is when they are making a living and going from 1-5 employees.”

This comment got me thinking deeper about our own client’s growth numbers.

Kaleidico, after several years of serving hundreds of sales organizations and managing millions of leads, has experienced many interesting trends. However, the one I’m going to talk about today pertains to my post on who shouldn’t buy lead management software.

That statement was based on the general premise that…

Sales Organizations Rarely Grow.

Do you buy it? It’s true. I know I am blowing the lid off a dirty little CRM secret, but its true. Despite how awesome ours or any other CRM system is–it probably will not make you grow.

Why?

I would say the big picture answer is that we often confine ourselves within a limiting belief system. Now, I’m the last to get New Age or Think and Grow Rich on you, but there is a psychological barrier that works on all of us. Faith is really hard.

Problem #1 – Faith we can go beyond our current condition.

We also build frameworks that trap us. These are the processes and procedures that create consistency in an organization. Chances are you are rarely willing to try a new process. This is where I think Anthony Iannarino hit square on with his post: Sales Process Problems. These frameworks create predictability, but they kill break-out growth.

Problem #2 – Rigid Process that limits our freedom to try something new.

We also often lack the knowledge or the experience to see bigger opportunities. Sure we can read lots of business how-to books, but until you have tried to trek up the mountain you have no idea the steps between a little start-up and GE.

Problem #3 – Knowledge, simply not knowing what we don’t know.

Finally, and probably the root of one, two, and three is fear. So many of our businesses, especially in weak economic conditions, feel like they are teetering on disaster. We are afraid of stretching out, for fear of what we might lose.

Problem #4 – Fear of trying something new, even if it might Zoom us.

The real point is don’t buy software (especially CRM software) and expect it to grow you. Buy software to support your growth, to give you flexibility to be creative, and help you learn what you might not know.

What do you think? Do sales organizations grow or just churn? Do you have an example of one that saw break-out growth? What happened?

You learn the best lessons from the simplest experiences. Here’s mine…

Last night I crashed about 11:00 p.m., never even cracking my MacBook to take my typical final pulse for the evening.

I was exhausted. My work is a bit chaotic (my business is in a full scale client-led strategic shift because of our new Eavesdropper product), every night is spent walking door-to-door (I’m running for School Board in Flat Rock, MI), and I played a late-night volleyball game in my church league.

I even missed tucking in my little angels last night.

My life is busy these days. The last thing I think about is blogging.

Then in swaggers Chris Brogan (@ChrisBrogan), with a lesson.

A lesson in motivation.

You see Chris, who is about 200% busier than I am, took the time to kick me in the pants last night. To give me a lesson in motivation. It was a simple Tweet:

However, that simple tweet did several powerful things a good leader/mentor can regularly do to motivate their team:

• He said, “I know what your capable of”
• “I miss that performance level from you,”
• “I am going to put the responsibility on you to fix it” (note his use of humor), and
• “I am going to raise the bar/expectations” (that Tweet doubled my daily traffic and quadrupled my RSS subscribers)

So, welcome everyone! Go motivate someone today.

And very sincerely, thank you Chris Brogan for all that you do.

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I was an early follower of David Allen‘s Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity philosophy. It immediately synced with my observations of what makes sales people productive. Allen’s techniques in personal productivity are most effective with busy people. Sales is a numbers game. Processing high volumes of opportunities–efficiently–makes GTD a bulls eye strategy for sales.

When I started applying GTD to my sales teams I was struck by how counter cultural it was. Then I tried to get my sales software to enforce the principles. It was impossible. That is when I knew there was opportunity.

Sales fundamentally is a high-stakes, big numbers game. That sounds like Vegas and most sales people manage their efforts like Vegas–roll the dice and hope for the big hit. However, the people I saw hitting big were methodical processors.

Processing Your Sales Pipeline

In GTD there is the concept of “Getting ‘In’ to Empty.” Our sales pipeline is nothing more than an Inbox and we are going to apply the same principles.

As you process your sales pipeline you should get a sense of motion. Each sales lead should be moving to a different status. Nothing should stay put.

Working through your pipeline should result in leads flowing through these statuses:

1. Attempted: Every lead should get some attempt at contact
2. Contacted: When you make contact a lead transforms
3. Scheduled: Moves leads from routine processing to calendar
4. Application/Proposal: This puts the deal on the table
5. Processing: Can be a bit confusing, but this processing an order
6. Closed: The order is processed, delivered, and you have a client
7. Nurturing: This is where non-responsive prospects go

Allen’s GTD processing has some fundamental rules that we are also going to follow in GTD for Sales.

Top Item First

When I read Getting Things Done for the first time this was one of my first ah ha moments. As I looked around my sales floor I saw everyone “cherry picking” leads. For you non-sales types, that means looking at a list of leads and jumping all around for the “good ones.”

The habit of “cherry picking” is very natural, but easily the most devastating bad practice in sales. Intuition about what a good account looks like is nearly always wrong. What makes it even worse is that bad guesses lead to happy competitors that pick up that easy client you skipped.

All sales leads should be processed from the top down. If you do any prioritization it should be automated and completely obscured from your pipeline processing. Focus is critical. There should be no distractions in processing from the top to the bottom of the pipeline.

One Item at a Time

This is another powerful principle. People tend to mistake being surrounded by lots of stuff and multi-tasking with productivity. My experience is quite the contrary. Giving each item its due focus will move everything in your pipeline forward faster.

This principle is critical to sales, but rarely applied. Each sales lead that comes into your pipeline has an equal probability of closing with you–0 percent. That’s right, if you don’t make a disciplined attempt to contact cold or hot sales leads they will not convert. Therefore, there is no reason to do anything but attempt to contact one lead at a time, in turn, until all are processed.

Concentrating on each lead individually, one at a time, gives it the focus and attention that plays through on the phone or even in a follow-up email. Customers can tell a power dialed or automated email contact. They defensively reject it and you lose any efficiency you might have gained.

Processing one sales lead at a time makes sure nothing is lost, lacks follow-up, or gives that you’re just a number feel. It also gives you momentum. No more wondering what is next–simply get your next lead.

Never Put Anything Back Into “In”

It is ironic how many of these GTD principles most sales software and sales people violate. “Never put anything back into ‘in’” is another classic mistake. How many sales leads do you skip over everyday? Leads you are going to work later. Leads that are of lesser priority. How many ever get a second look?

You see the problem. If you leave leads in the inbox, in their initial state or status, they will never even get an attempt.

Some leads may truly be of a lower priority, but they should still be processed and attempted. Maybe you don’t want to call inquiries under a certain dollar amount. That’s fine, but at least send an email or delegate it to a telemarketer. It could still be a sale, just help the customer do a self-service order or go through a cheaper sales channel.

If you don’t sell that level or specific product at least tell the customer–better yet refer them to someone that does.

GTD has a lot of lessons for making your sales happen in greater volume and frequency. Batch processing your leads is just one facet of applying Getting Things Done to your sale pipeline. Stay tuned for more insights on applying GTD for Sales.

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• Stripped GTD: 3 Habits That Make You More Productive (lifehack.org)
• GTD Refresh, Part 5: Building the Weekly Review Habit (lifehack.org)

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Skip Anderson’s piece on “The Random Sales Process” caught my eye. How true is this. Most sales people and organizations I encounter are on a long, meandering, and random walk towards a sales goal.

Is it a wonder many a sales quota is missed?

Take Out the Randomness

The biggest cause of randomness in my sales experience has been cherry picking leads. C’mon admit it–you spend hours deciding who to call next. Chances are you feel unprepared; there is something in the lead data that intimidates or underwhelms you; or you simply have phone anxiety.

Despite all the hoopla over athletes visualization and meditation routines there is a reason Nike’s tag line is: “Just Do It!”

Michael Jordan was the best because of thousands of shots taken (most of which he even admits he missed) and Tiger Woods still hits 400+ golf balls a day. They are taking out the randomness!

Truth is that the law of big numbers covers most mistakes and certainly a ton of inefficiency.

Know What Gets You There

If you want to go big and squeeze out the opportunity to go random, here is the easiest way to do it…

Figure out where you want to go and work backwards to see what gets you there. Try this simple worksheet:

1. Sales Goal ($):
2. Average Deal Size:
3. Number of average units to hit goal:
4. Average conversion of leads to deals:
5. Number of leads I need to contact to his goal:

Number 5 is your number–randomness gone!

Plan to Learn (and Improve)

The next biggest challenge that introduces randomness is thinking you need to do something to get ready. Do you use any of these classics?

• I need marketing collateral
• I need a case study or whitepaper
• I need new business cards
• I need a website or blog

Hog wash!

More sales secrets revealed: You need more good conversations!

Those good conversations will teach you everything you need and more importantly reveal all the things you don’t need to waste your time on.

Eliminate Randomness in Sales

Why are you still reading? I told you everything you need to know to eliminate randomness. Now, go do it!

Check in tomorrow and leave a comment to tell me how it is going.

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“Have I got a deal for you…”

“What would make you buy today…”

“I have some aggressive pricing if you purchase before month end…”

“You want to call me back. I have an incredible opportunity…”

Why do sales people start conversations like this?

Pushy, Obnoxious, Aggressive, Narcissistic, Assholes–these are just a few of the cheery labels folks put on sales people.

But, why are we like that? Other than the obvious effects of Post Traumatic Sales Disorder (PTSD) here are a few clues:

• Sales Quotas – They make us desperate and crazy. Every month is a new treadmill. It is nearly impossible to see the future value of a relationship.

  So, I need to close you right now!

• Compensation Plans – I don’t get paid for good conversation. In fact, I don’t really get paid anything until a handful of you people sign the dotted line this month.

  So, I need to close you right now!

• Marketing ROI – These guys and gals are all on my back. Somehow filling my sales pipeline with bad phone numbers, emails, and people who aren’t even considering our solution is my fault. They spent a lot of money to get your info.

  So, I need to close you right now!

• Sales Tools – I have a phone and email account. What more could I possibly need. I don’t know how I might keep track of you to follow-up when you really need me.

  So, I need to close you right now!

Sorry, sales people are assholes.

But, we can change. Give us a little time to ramp up to those sales quotas, compensate us for building relationships and customer evangelist, measure marketing on more than ROI, and give us the right tools to manage lots of relationships.

Customers will like us better and sales will improve.

(Photo: Davezilla was taken)

Not sure who said this, but I think it is very appropriate to sales management: “The 70 percent solution is often good enough.” Often we fiddle so long with dreaming up perfection that we neglect to get started.

FranklinCovey and GTD have created a whole productivity industry (products and services) banking on that assumption.

Here is how I see it playing out in sales management:

1. Spend too much time finding the right lead. Ultimately, most leads are made the same. They all need to be qualified and prioritized based on the prospects needs and ability to buy. Of course, in order to do that it all boils down to making initial contact.

2. Spend too much time preparing to contact. Don’t get me wrong knowing a little about your contact before you barrel in with a call is helpful. However, usually you need only to grab one or two interesting facts or common ground to start a conversation, not ever intimate detail of their life.

3. Spend too much effort “grading” and “scoring” leads. I know this is probably sacrilegious considering the popularity of the discussion, but really what is the lift. My experience is consistent. You get a lot more impact focusing on the basics of making contact and improving with repetition than you do with any fancy scoring system.

4. Spend too much effort getting prepared to measure. This is a big distraction in my experience. Systems are easy and fun to build. Everyone thinks that sales is 100% logical. I can build a process that will guarantee sales to drop or we have to get the measurements right to improve. Track the number of calls you make and the results–then get more sophisticated.

Sometimes it is better to “Just Do It!”

In sales, that means:

1. Get the next lead. No cherry picking. No sorting. No prioritization. Much of that will naturally evolve in a properly worked sales pipeline. Just grab the next lead on the pile and go.

2. Make contact. This doesn’t always have to be a phone call, but reach out and talk to this person. The Internet and social media is making that first contact easier and easier (i.e., connect on Twitter, Linkedin, etc.)

3. Annotate the action. Done consistently, this will put robust data in your hands to support measurement, prioritization, and grading. Know you made a contact or attempt and the result is going to give you more value in increasing sales performance than any other external process or grading system.

4. Grab the next lead. That’s right get on to the next lead now. This simple four step sales process will produce focus, data, and volume–all the makings of great sales results.

Let the grading and analysis of your efforts naturally reveal itself, as you execute. Avoid over thinking your plan and start executing. The ability to repeatedly execute and adjust based on the immediate feedback that gives you will always put you ahead of the competition.

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(photo: Grant MacDonald)

Today, we have an ever-increasing number of knowledge workers. As work becomes less about muscle and more about innovation, intellect, and sales leadership styles often need to change becoming progressively more flexible.

Knowledge workers generally have loyalty to their manager and sales team, but not to the company. Managing employees through fear usually results in them voting with their feet, and leaving for a more rewarding work environment.

Now, with baby boomers increasingly retiring from the sales workforce there is a rapidly growing shortage of qualified workers. So how do you recruit more members for your sales team? And, how do you turn each into high-producing sales leaders.

Finding the Love

Managers often find by showing some “love”, it helps to recruit and retain high product sales team members. Do you have that employee who complains loudly? Which type of employees is more productive for your sales organization?  There are many reasons why people love their jobs:

• Some people love sales for the money
• Others love sales for the recognition
• Some love the security it provides for their family and themselves
• Some love their work because it allows them to contribute in making a difference.

Once you know what motivates an individual worker, you can provide that environment which motivates them to become a high producing sales leader. And, when people love their work, they’ll tell others. This means more people will want to work for your sales organization. The trick is to create a work environment where this form of enthusiasm is at least allowed and at best, encouraged.

Reputation Attracts Sales Talent

In today’s interconnected mobile world, it is important to build a reputation that attracts more qualified sales leaders to your sales team? Support your workers showing appreciation so they feel like whole people doing a job, not being the job. Appreciation fosters awareness, fear falls away, job enjoyment, satisfaction and sales results increase.

Identifying Motivation Profiles

It is important to develop a sales force that is self motivated focused on certain key skill sets to get them to their next level of growth and performance?  While leading sales organizations often manage thousands of salespeople, we generally find four types of individual motivating factors or characteristics including;

The high achieving sales executives are the best at bringing in the numbers, but chances are that you may spend a fair share of your time cleaning up their messes. It may often seem like they’re either sky-high or down in the dumps. When the high achiever is down, they are out of their selling zone, and productivity comes to a standstill. But when they are up on their game, look out world.

The professional producer may also be considered very consistent, a total team player, even tempered, patient, and consistently delivers results. Professionals are also part of the elite members on the sales team, but they seem to be missing some opportunities that would catapult them to super stardom. Instead, they generally stick to self-proven conservative approaches.

The caretaker maybe stuck in stagnate sales game. These are the sales executives that are simply stuck in their lackluster comfort zones—giving you a solid month about every third month, or giving you that seventy percent effort range. They have the potential, but they’re consistently mediocre. You just can’t get them to perform the difficult tasks that it takes to produce at top levels with any regularity. Worse yet, they’re passive aggressive. You say to yourself, “If I could only wake them up, they’d be right up there with the best.”

The searcher is the most difficult and not a sales career fit.  These misfits are consumed with fear, and if truth be told, they honestly hate sales. A searcher has no real intention of making the necessary changes to be successful. You’re better off helping them find more fulfilling careers elsewhere.

Strong Sales Leadership Helps People “Out” Too

Effective leadership management must often perform the unenviable task of helping those that don’t belong to find other career paths. If you want sales to improve, particularly in highly competitive sales industries, then leaders must create a career growth-oriented atmosphere that thrives on constant improvement, regardless of market conditions. By the way, that means leadership management must also be striving to break through to their personal achievement levels as well. Effective sales is about sustaining momentum thru innovation creating even more revenue opportunities on a consistent basis.

The old adage that the sale is in the follow-up has never been more accurate in today’s marketplace. Businesses are suffering and finding new customers can be an expensive chore. However, by working on your pipeline management techniques and finding new ways to create leads, you can stay on top of this economy and start to see some definite results.

Sales Leads Process

Whenever you’re dealing with sales leads, you’ll need to have an effective sales process in order to manage them properly. If you do not have a sales manager, it is even more important to take the time to develop a process that is going to take you from start to finish in the easiest means possible.

You have enough to do without having to worry about what’s going on with your leads and your sales team and taking the time to handle pipeline management now will free you up in the future to handle the day to day needs of your business, while your sales are moving smoothly.

Utilizing a leads CRM system can help this process go even more smoothly, especially if you are dealing with numerous sales leads. By having a software application that can assign priority, send reminders for customer follow-ups and help you manage your sales team more effectively, you can guarantee that your sales department will function more smoothly.

Setting up a System That Works

Each company is different and you’re going to have different needs when it comes to organizing your team. The important thing to focus on is what works for your company, not necessarily what may work for another. There will be a time where you will need to test different strategies to see which ones work the best for your organization.

Pipeline management is most effective when you have a dedicated team that knows what they are doing. Do your best to make sure that the learning curve of how you handle leads is easy to understand and make your expectations clear. This will help your sales process immeasurably.

Customer Follow Up Schedules

Whether you decide to use a CRM system to schedule follow-ups or you are doing it the old fashioned way, figuring out which team members will be assigned to these tasks is an important step. You’ll want to put your best and most persuasive sales members on these calls. Don’t make the mistake of handing this off to an inexperienced sales person.

Scheduling the frequency of follow-ups is another important step to ensure your success. You don’t want them to forget about you, but you don’t want to be a nuisance either. Since some industries are more competitive than others, you’ll need to test what length of time works best for your specific organization.

Putting it Together

Your company can only be successful if you keep adding new clients and prospecting for sales. Having the right pipeline and the right lead management techniques is a vital part of this system and should never be overlooked.

A company is only as strong as its sales team, and if you have not taken the time to build a strong foundation, your business will definitely suffer. Building a team may take time, but if you go about it the right way, it is an investment that will keep paying off.

There are three main things to keep in mind when you are ready to build your team, and these points will help you fast track your success.

1.    Focus on Sales Recruiting – Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric stated many times that hiring should be the main focus of your business. You simply cannot let your sales staff become stagnant.

By continually working on sales recruiting, you will be able to build a solid and talented team. Don’t be afraid to replace team members that may not be hitting their quotas. In this economy, businesses can’t afford to be tied down by dead weight.

2.    Hire a Sales Management Director – As the owner of a business, you have enough on your plate without having to manage a sales team. You may want to consider hiring someone to handle sales management for you. The extra expense will be offset by increased productivity, and later sales.

Again, this is a position that will need to be monitored for productivity. If your current manager isn’t cutting it, don’t hesitate to replace them.

3.    Use Project Management Software – To some business owners, the thought of utilizing project management software seems incomprehensible, but even the smallest sales teams can benefit from a cohesive strategy laid out in a logical form.

Set goals for your sales staff, deadlines for specific projects and allow your sales management director to actively manage the team’s projects. You don’t have to be a million dollar company to act like one, and the result is typically success.
By focusing your energy on sales recruiting, and letting your manager handle the actual team, you’ll be freeing up your time to spend on more important matters. Hiring should take precedence in your organization unless you are at financial point where this is no longer feasible.

Three Mistakes to Avoid

Your team may not always function the way you would like, and there are a few mistakes that business owners can make that reduces productivity. Let’s look at some of these common mistakes and how to counteract them.

• Failure to motivate. If your team is not motivated, they will not produce. It’s merely human nature, but you can harness it for the greater good of your company. The success of your company may not be enough of a motivator for most salespeople. Try finding monetary or tangible motivators to keep your staff happy and productive.
• Letting problems continue. If you have a sales staff member that just can’t seem to get it together, the first move should be discussing the problem and setting a specific date for resolution. If that date is passed and they simply cannot meet their goals, then you will need to let them go.
• Failure to innovate. Any business can benefit from innovation, no matter how small it may seem. Encourage your team to come up with new ideas and new concepts.

Putting it All Together

Now that you have the key ingredients to making a team that will function for your company, don’t delay putting it together. Start recruiting new team members and see where they can take your company.