How To Turn Sales Farmers Into Sales Hunters

Ask the president of any company what he needs to grow his company to its full potential and he will likely tell you, "get me more customers."

Therein lies the mystery of why so many companies accept that 80 percent of their new customers are brought in by 20 percent of their sales people. Clearly many sales people are satisfied making their numbers by farming their present customer base instead of hunting for and bagging new accounts. If your company has too many farmers and not enough hunters, you can turn this situation around.

1. Find out who can sell before you hire them. Traditional sales screening tests and interviewing techniques often miss people who have a natural talent for sales. The proof of this is; one out of three sales people who do pass hiring tests fail in the field.

2. Find out who can sell after you hire them. You already know the "hunters" on your sales team. They're the people who relish finding and selling new prospects. Between these hunters and your so-so performers is a wide spectrum of sales talent that needs to be better focused on developing new business.

Finding "naturals" - sales people who will be sales hunters isn't easy. With 33 percent of sales representatives annually dropping out of the typical sales force, it's clear that present screening and hiring techniques are not sufficient. That's why you need to assess your sales people realistically; where it counts the most; in a new business presentation to a prospect.

There are two ways to perform effective presentation-based sales assessments; one is to conduct simulated sales calls. The other is to assess representatives on actual sales calls to new prospects. For simulated sales presentations, we suggest you provide sales people the following two documents to help them prepare:

1. A Description of Your Company: This should be a one or two page clearly worded description of your company. Include in it your company's credentials and superlatives, and list the features and benefits of its product and services.

2. A Description of a Buying Company: This document should identify a typical company that buys your products and services, including the names of the key decision-makers, their line of business, their present practices, and what they are looking for in way of improvements and benefits. Include a list of typical buying objections as well as information on your competition.

3. Allow sales people one week to prepare their presentation; then schedule them for a specific time and place to meet with a "buyer ."

During the assessment, score sales performance from poor to excellent in key sales skill areas. Add the scores and write comments to aid in mentoring and training. Since you've provided all your sales people with the same base of information you can fairly and accurately compare their scores. Most important you will pinpoint the weaknesses in their sales presentations.

Ten Suggested Sales Skill Areas to Assess:

The following are ten key skill areas to score in a sales assessment: Score them from one to five, with one being poor and five being excellent.

1. Creating a favorable first impression

2. Use of conversational and listening skills

3. Presentation management; effective use of the buyer's time

4. Creating buyer confidence; presentation of company's credentials, products and services

5. Identifying the buyer's needs and the solutions to them

6. Qualifying the buyer and uncovering the decision chain

7. Communicating a Total Value Proposition

8. Handling buyer objections

9. Closing the sale

10. Preparation and use of sales tools

Within each of the ten sales skills there can be several selling factors that will add up to a total for that skill area. After scoring each sales skill, add up the scores and you will have a total sales competency score with which base hiring and training decisions.

If you decide to tackle the challenge of turning your sales farmers into sales hunters, sales assessments will weed out job candidates who can't make the grade, and it will light a fire under your present sales people. If you need help, it's available from many highly qualified consultants, and in larger companies from inhouse sales trainers and HRD experts. However, there is easy to use sales assessment software and manuals for evaluating direct and telephone sales people at www.SalesJudge.com.

Stanley Livacz
President
Interactive Sales Assessments

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.