Sales Force Productivity - Eight Practices That Ensure Your Sales Success

We have never needed to improve sales productivity more than we do in this dreadful economy. For decades, businesses have embraced  productivity and cost controls in operational functions like manufacturing and distribution; programs like Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma and LEAN are thriving all over the map. Except in the sales department. We suggest that sales organizations can benefit dramatically from adopting some basic principles of productivity management, simple business techniques that lower costs, improve customer profitability and retention, and reduce sales-person turnover.   This article explores the eight key practices that contribute to productivity. Each practice can be either a contributor if it is in place, or an inhibitor if it isn't.

Practice #1: The Prospect Profile

If you don't have a documented prospect profile then you may be lengthening the sales cycle and driving your team to pursue under-qualified or unprofitable deals.

 

Sales people probably spend more time prospecting and qualifying than they do anything else. Sales people who have a documented prospect profile can qualify opportunities more quickly and with greater accuracy than those that have no such guidelines. The basic prospect profile includes standard factual data, such as industry sector, number of employees, annual revenue, and so on. The most effective profiles go beyond these facts and include more qualitative characteristics that describe buyer motivation, trigger events, corporate values and other psychographic elements. 

 

Practice #2: Clear Targets and Incentives for Acquiring New Customers

New-customer acquisition is clearly an element of sales success. In fact, it's the reason your sales people spend so much time prospecting and qualifying. Contribute to productivity by setting clear goals for acquiring new business, and provide incentives. When setting new-customer targets, establish goals for revenue from new customers, and also establish separate goals for numbers of new customers.

Practice #3: Clear Targets and Incentives for Retaining Current Customers

No matter how important it is to acquire new customers, it costs a lot more than retaining current ones. If you are not giving your sales people specific targets for retaining current customers, your productivity is in jeopardy. This practice ensures that sales people will invest effort in keeping the customer happy, and encouraging them to buy again. You need to know if your team is losing loyal customers, and figure out a way to win them back.

Practice #4: Clear Targets and Incentives for Developing Current Customers Through Up-Selling and Cross-Sell

If your team has a goal of retaining a specific number of current customers, give them an additional goal of cross-selling and up-selling those customers. Maintaining the current contract is great, increasing the size of the current contract is better, and adding additional products or services is best. But unless you assign those targets specifically, sales people may not perform at maximum productivity.

Practice #5: Available Sales Support Resources for Labor-Intensive Low-Return Activities (Database Cleanup, Proposal Generation, Collections, Dispute Resolution, Etc.)

Sales people have many demands on their time. One hour of opportunity time can cost as much as $1,100 or more based on calculations we have conducted with our clients. Tasks like database cleanup, email marketing campaigns and past-due collections cost sales people many hours but contribute very little to their sales success. Forcing them to manage these tasks is a false economy. It is far more productive to delegate, outsource or automate these tasks as much as possible, even if it might stretch your budget to do so.

Practice #6: Require Sales People to Take Adequate Downtime

Stressed, tired or burned-out people take twice as long to do the same tasks. And they tend to use poor judgment. So contrary to conventional wisdom, if you encourage your team to work extra hours, you are inhibiting their productivity. Don't simply tell them to work smart and take vacations. Demand it.

Practice #7:  Create Performance Metrics that Cover the Sales Process from Beginning to End.

The classic way to measure sales performance is that of revenue produced or performance against quota. This is a weak indicator of effectiveness of efficiency. It comes too late in the process to correct the situation. Figure out ways to measure the sales process from the very start, and at critical milestones along the way. Define the stages of the sales process, and give your people specific targets for each stage in a given period of time. For example, consider adding number of prospects qualified, number of prospects who request a proposal, number of prospects who negotiate the terms and scope of the proposal. When sales people reach each of these key milestones the probability of a win increases. You can also figure out where the process stalls. The use of end-to-end metrics is a major contributor to productivity.

Practice #8: Useful Methods for Managing Nonproductive Sales People

Figuring out who is productive and who is not.  A sales person may be nonproductive because he is the wrong person for the job, or because he has little clarity of expectations, inadequate or insufficient coaching from his manager, or encounters operational obstacles beyond his control, which impede his performance.  The most popular methods of dealing with nonproductive sales people may not be the most productive.  These include firing the sales person, more product training and more sales skills training.  These methods are relatively high cost and produce relatively low benefits.  Some other practices tend to be lower in cost yet produce significantly better returns.  These include providing more qualified leads to sales people, clarifying and documenting their performance expectations, and improving the management, leadership and coaching skills of sales managers.

Ellen Bristol is the founder and driving force behind Bristol Strategy Group, the Miami-based sales-force productivity company, and developer of Selling the SMART Way®, BSG's flagship solution for productive sales teams. BSG's latest offering is the SMART Way Scorecard, a web-based system for managing sales force productivity. Visit us at http://www.bristolstrategygroup.com email Ellen at ellen@bristolstrategygroup.com, or phone 305-935-6676.

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Luxury Second Home Real Estate: Five Ingredients to Ensure A-1 Sales

It's been said that making sales in leisure resort real estate is not rocket science. Perhaps not, but it is a discipline that requires attentive strategies be employed to enhance sales pace and to mitigate risk. Consider the following tenets:

1. Coordinate Marketing and Sales Activities with a Properly Funded Budget. The marketing and sales function is the most important component to the profitable operation of any luxury second home real estate venture. This activity is as equally important, if not more so, than as the quality of the product itself - "the sticks, bricks and furnishings", if you will. The long accepted adage of "Build it and they will come" is being challenged daily in today's competitive real estate boom. Even among projects of equal quality, the better marketing and sales entity will inevitably capture a disproportionate share of the market.

As a point of definition, Marketing covers all of the activities required to get a qualified prospect in front of a salesperson. The Sales function covers what happens from that point forward. The two must obviously work hand in hand. We believe marketing and sales efforts must be dovetailed to achieve the common goal of cost-efficient sales that are retained long-term, in order to generate additional downstream revenues. It quickly becomes clear that a well-tuned and balanced marketing and sales campaign can have a very significant impact on the development company's financial performance. A faster sales pace and shorter sellout reduces both the developer's and lender's exposure time and expense.

So, how to get there? Prepare and administer a coherent and appropriate marketing plan that is understood by all - one that can be modified as the circumstances dictate. One requisite of any such plan or campaign is the significant and rapid flow of money necessary to pay for the many promotions, especially in pre-sales start-up activities. There are always several programs that are simultaneously used that all require quick and significant funding.

Strategy: An adequately funded start-up budget to accomplish any pre-sales goals prior to lender funding is essential. Delays in paying for marketing activities can be disastrous. Worse yet, running out of dollars before your marketing program is launched is sheer project suicide.

2. Utilize One Sales Team to Represent All Leisure Real Estate Products. From our experiences in the industry both past and present, we know some simple truths about the leisure real estate buying market. The first fact is that no one buys a real estate product sight unseen. A second corollary is that the bulk of the sales will be generated from prospects that are repeat visitors to the destination resort area. And, the third corollary is that no prospect has a clear idea of which product is right for them until they hear of their options. No one walks through the door wanting to buy a fractional or a condo-hotel interest. The prospect's opening statement may be that they simply want to hear about the condos for sale.

Relationship selling techniques are in vogue and are appropriate for leisure real estate sales. Here, a sales representative first builds trust with his/her prospects and then proceeds with a discovery phase to determine their prospects' needs, attitudes, preferences and motivations along with a finding of how often they might use the second home product. The agent can then present the real estate options in light of the solutions afforded to that particular prospect and to advise each prospect on which of the multiple products is best for them. Prospective buyers resent being flipped to another agent after they've vested themselves in the one agent, who has now become their friend and trusted consultant. This overriding factor underpins our philosophical approach that emphasizes a single sales team approach to presenting leisure real estate product options.

Strategy: If you are a resort developer with a mixture of residential program offerings, cross train your sales representatives on all second home leisure real estate products. Consider abandoning the idea of maintaining separate sales teams that sell strictly lots, or strictly whole ownership or shared ownership interests or strictly condo-hotel interests. You'll find that your product options will not cannibalize one another and the project will make more sales faster while experiencing less rescission.

3. Get the Right People on the Team. In order to have a successful ongoing marketing and sales operation, a team of talented, disciplined and motivated people must be assembled and paid well for results. We believe it is imperative to bring in a few key people experienced in the particular product format you plan on offering around which to build your team. It is much more costly to get off to a slow start or not get off at all for lack of talent or expertise.

To achieve the results projected, we believe in acquiring good people, training them and paying them well to retain them. Highly trained and motivated salespeople can maintain significantly higher closing percentages than those of average salespeople.

Strategy: Recruit, train and properly compensate a professional sales team for your leisure real estate project. Hold all accountable to performance standards for the project and tie compensation to performance as much as possible. Having the wrong people on your sales team can be very costly to the project, both in lost sales and wasted marketing dollars. The losses can amount to millions of dollars.

4. Deliver Well Qualified Prospects to the Sales Team

An exemplary and consistent flow of well-qualified prospects will yield much higher closing percentages for your leisure real estate project. Between marketing and sales, the more important and variable of the two is marketing. All other things being equal, the sales staff with its capabilities and closing percentages is predictable and controllable. The overall success of the sales offering is, more often than not, made or broken by the marketing component.

For most properties in resort destination areas, we expect to see real estate product sales consummated by prospective buyers that are generated from three general sources:

A. Group One: Those guests that are physically already there visiting the resort area.

B. Group Two: Those prospects who are planning on coming to the resort area, but who are as yet unfamiliar with the project's real estate product offering opportunity.

C. Group Three: Those prospects who know the resort area, but who are not planning on visiting the destination this upcoming year.

Interest from prospective buyers tends to be piqued when they see a resort's new buildings coming out of the ground. And, as that activity becomes evident and exciting, prospects will walk into the preview center to ask "what's it all about" and investigate whether there is a significant opportunity for them. Until construction stages begin and during pre-sales activities, the question remains as to how to get those guests and prospects mentioned above to inquire about your real estate opportunity.

Strategy: The thrust of any project's marketing and sales pre-sales plan, along with the attendant expenditure of marketing dollars, should be strictly focused on just this tactical approach - getting well qualified prospective buyers who are sold on the destination resort area to visit the preview center.

5. Get Sales Posted Quickly to Create a Project Buzz. The thrust of any marketing campaign for an upcoming pre-sales season should have an emphasis on "Awareness" - getting the word out on your project's offering. For Groups One and Two, this awareness campaign will work to ensure that prospects will stop in the preview center to check out your opportunity while at the resort area. For Group Three prospects, the awareness campaign may actually serve to encourage those prospects to rearrange their schedules to accommodate a trip to the resort area sooner than they had planned.

All in all, the marketing campaign should direct prospects to your resort website or sales center, where they can opt in for more information and to set an appointment. The ability to generate walk-in traffic will be the key to absolute sales success. With a properly designed project that incorporates a use plan that makes perfect sense to the consumer, people will buy and sales will flow steadily.

Strategy: The immediate mission is to get sales on the board quickly in order to build momentum and the sense of a successful project. Salespeople need confidence. A sense of urgency must be instilled in them as well as in the prospects. Making sales steadily builds that confidence, creates a "buzz of success" for the project and satisfies everyone involved with the project - the consumers, the developer, his investors and lenders and the sales representatives. Win-win for all is the name of the game.

For more information on the sales and marketing of fractional ownership, private residence clubs, and on condo hotels, including listings and photos of current and past projects, visit the Star Resort Group website at www.starresortgroup.com

John R. Kazanjian, is Executive Vice President of Star Resort Group. He is a co-founder of The World?s Finest Resorts and has served as CEO of Resort Development & Advisors. His 30-year career has focused in fractional ownership resort real estate and vacation ownership development. Visit the Star Resort Group website at http://www.starresortgroup.com for more information on the sales and marketing of fractional ownership, private residence clubs, and on condo hotels, including listings and photos of current and past projects.

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Promotional Literature - How Do You Ensure It Pays for Itself?

Many people in the world can write, but only very few can do it effectively when it comes to business. If you're one of those people, then you've seriously lucked out and should thank your lucky stars. However, if you have to hire and get a freelance writer to do it for you, then you better make sure the product you're receiving is of a high enough quality to pay for itself in the long run.

A basic business template - i.e. common sense - says to make sure the text is well-written, free of grammatical errors and to the point but there's a lot more to writing effective copy than keeping it short, simple and clean. Whether you'll be trying to take on the writing duties or hiring out, you'll need to know a few things about making promotional text pay for itself.

Tips for your Text

First and foremost, think about your target here. In business, you don't attempt to placate everyone. You just won't be able to please such a diverse audience. This is what niche markets are all about. Make sure your text caters to your particular market: age, ethnicity, economic status, education, etc...

If you do happen to cater to various education or economic levels in a select demographic, you can certainly work out varying sets of promotional text. For example, if you're promoting for industry leaders, you may want your literature to be a bit more technical. If you're targeting customers, keep it simple. You also have to remember that the literature is what's telling the tale literally - about your product or service.

Of course, people don't want nor need to know every minute detail, yet the literature still has one main purpose: to inform. Many make the mistake in assuming their literature needs to grab people and lure them in through some magic trick that doesn't exist. What really sells is information. Explain what you're offering.

Informative literature sells itself. There are a few types of promotional literature, including case studies, brochures and circulars. Although they go about it in different ways, each piece of literature can be used to your advantage in order to sell a product. A brochure will describe the products, so this is where the most reader-friendly information is needed.

Circulars usually describe deals and offers. And case studies deliver hard data about a product, answering all questions and thoroughly explaining it. The point of describing the three: don't mix and match. Each type of promotional piece needs to be a piece all its own. You don't want to start talking about offers and 2fer specials in a case study, nor do you want to overly explain a product and lay out hard data in a brochure. There's a time and a place for everything. Make sure you separate the literature.

Write technically when needed but back off when not. Keep it clean, fun and fresh and relate this criteria to the person you hire if you go that route.

For more information on how to grown your business online and how to use effective internet marketing, please visit us at http://www.ladyluckmedia.co.uk

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