What Makes a Great Salesperson
 

Even though many salespeople sell by themselves, they are really not alone. Behind many great sales professionals are great sales managers.  A sales manager is someone who can make selling much easier---or a whole lot harder.  John Funderburgh (www.jrf.info), a former Accenture consultant, ran an international information technology consulting firm for 20 years.  He now is a private advisor to business owners and entrepreneurs.  His sales management success can contribute to your selling success. 

Management defines the process.  Too often management expects salespeople to do the impossible. Funderburgh says, “You wouldn’t expect someone on the assembly line to figure out how to assemble a product. Why would you expect sales people to develop a sales process?”  Funderburgh defined the process that he wanted his salespeople to use when they sold. The process began with outbound calling. Rather than have salespeople prospecting, Funderburgh defined the criteria for prospects and gave his staff the lists of prospects. This method produced more viable prospects. Salespeople continued the process by building the relationship with face-to-face sales calls. Generating a proposal was the next step. Following up on the proposal to close the business was the last step. Seems like simple steps.  Funderburgh almost made the process infallible. 

Don’t kid yourself.  Funderburgh learned that successful selling is something different than hiring an extrovert who charms customers into buying.  He found that a successful salesperson was one who could work with clearly set performance goals in a defined process.  Funderburgh hired new salespeople with the expectation of what their activity level would be in the first 90 days.  He found that when people didn’t perform then, they never would.  Finding out about poor performers early was essential.  Funderburgh says, “Having poor performers demoralized the rest of the team.”   

Let management measure it.  Salespeople should be doing what they do best.  Record keeping isn’t their strong suit.  Yet both salespeople and management need to know how many calls are turning into appointments, how many appointments are producing proposals and other results that move the sales process forward.  Funderburgh’s automated systems captured the data that needs to be measured so action could be taken. The number of outbound prospecting calls was automatically captured by his system.  Next, salespeople scheduled appointments that were automatically entered into a database.  The system also totaled the number of proposals sent and closed.  Funderburgh found measurement to be essential.  He says, “You have some dials to turn to fine-tune and a yardstick to compare individuals.”   He adds, “However you get your business, you need to set goals. You can’t do it informally. I worked with my sales staff on quantified performance. That was the secret of my success.”

Provide help.  Because Funderburgh knew what to measure in his process and had the data to review, he could see where his staff was having trouble.  He also met daily for brief 15 to 20 minute meetings with his staff. Funderburgh found that his internal resources provided the solutions to his staff’s problems.  He found that typically a salesperson had a problem in just one area— perhaps getting the appointment, and was fine in other areas.  The sales manager would enlist the help of another salesperson who was strong in that area.  Sometimes making joint sales calls with a sales manager provided the needed help.  At other times brainstorming solved the problem.  

Great management produces great selling results.  Your manager may want some additional incentive to implement these ideas. Tell your manager that Funderburgh retired very successfully at 49.  He works for fun now.

Maura Schreier-Fleming works with business and sales professionals on skills and strategies so they can sell more and be more productive at work.  She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results which is available at www.BestatSelling.com.  She founded her company Best@Selling in 1997.  You can reach her at 972.380.0200 or info@Bestatsellling.com.

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