Hyper Sales Growth: Street-Proven Systems & Processes. How to Grow Quickly & Profitably. by Jack Daly

Author:Jack Daly
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Published: 2014-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

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IF YOU’RE NOT TRAINING, YOU’RE NOT GAINING

“If your company is doing well, double your training budget. If your company is not doing well, quadruple it.”

—Tom Peters

A sales manager’s job is not to grow sales. It’s to grow salespeople in quantity and quality. If you do that, they in turn will grow your sales.

Recruiting is all about getting enough good people—that is, it’s about quantity. Now, let’s talk about how to grow the sales force in quality. That has to do with training. If you’re not training, you’re not gaining. What are your systems and processes to ensure that you are enhancing the skill set of your people?

There are three components of a strong training program for salespeople. The first is hands-on coaching. The second is role practice. The third we’ll call the success guide. Let’s take a look at each.

HANDS-ON COACHING

Too often, sales managers spend their time in their office behind their desk moving paper around. My philosophy is that the sales manager will get far better production by actively working with salespeople in the field.

There are three distinct types of calls that the sales manager can make with people in the field: the joint call, the training call, and the coaching call. Each has value, but most sales managers do none of them. If I find any sales manager out in the field making calls with the salespeople, they tend to be doing the joint call.

Let’s go through and describe each one of these calls.

The Joint Call

In a joint call, the sales manager spends the day in the field with the salesperson, and then they make the sales call together. They equally participate in the call. The salesperson engages the prospect in conversation and asks questions and establishes eye contact, while the manager rides shotgun and takes notes, listening intently. But if the manager hears something that the salesperson doesn’t pick up on, he jumps into the conversation and takes over, while the salesperson takes notes and listens. It’s back and forth, in and out.

At the end of that call, they debrief with questions such as these: “What did you think went well there? What did you think didn’t go so well there? Why were you asking that question? This is the direction I was going. What do we need to do going forward to win over the account?”

Not only is the joint call a great learning opportunity, but it is an excellent selling opportunity. The fact that the salesperson and the sales manager are out on the call together tends to mean that more business gets developed on those calls than at any other time. That’s the joint call, and that’s the kind, if any, that I see sales managers tend to be making.

The Training Call

In the training call, the sales manager makes the call and the salesperson rides along and takes notes, silently. The salesperson becomes the fly on the wall. The idea is to show someone else in action.

At the end of every call, we debrief.

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