Training budgets have been cut back to the bone to preserve cash flow in these challenging economic times, so we cross our fingers and hope that good sales people are born and all we need to do is find them and recruit them!

One major obstacle is that often good sales people tend to stay loyal to their employer and rarely come on to the open market. If they do move, they tend to via the unadvertised market through referral and word of mouth. So it seems logical to ‘make’ or develop good sales people ourselves.

There seems to be is a lot of confusion regarding the terms ‘hunters and farmers’. Unfortunately it means different thing to different people. So what is a ‘hunter’ sales person? A broad definition is a sales person that thrives on generating new business in new clients. The problem is that on the whole ‘hunters’ lack motivation to nurture ongoing relationships and manage the associated administration of maintaining an existing client relationship. ‘Hunters’ can neglect clients as they search for the next big deal and the ‘buzz’ of cracking yet another new account.

This can of course be remedied by transferring the client over to a ‘farmer’ who excels in maintaining and developing relationships with existing clients. Each sales style is crucial in any organizations however, it can be cost prohibitive to have both styles covered by different people and a balance needs to be found.

Just recruiting ‘hunters’ can be a real problem as it can leave your existing clients neglected and frustrated and prone to seeking out alternative partners, your competition!

It is well know that it costs considerably more to attract and win new clients than maintain and care for existing clients. Whilst it is vital to have a fresh crop of clients developing at any one time it is important to ensure that the balance is right. Conversely just recruiting farmers can leave you exposed and reliant on too few clients and a dwindling pipeline of opportunity.

Ensuring that your sales team is united in its goal and have a shared and clear vision of what they are required to achieve is vital. Unfortunately, this is rarely communicated succinctly by management teams and whilst sales teams can appear productive and busy they may not truly be in alignment with the company’s strategic and tactical objectives.

What messages are you giving to your team? Are your remuneration and incentive schemes driving the desired behavior and motivation? How do you reward success and failure? 

Many factors will affect sales teams’ performance. The following questions and suggestions may provide an insight in how to improve your sales team’s success.

How can I increase sales performance?

Work on developing confidence and reshaping negative experiences to promote a positive attitude and the opportunity to improve and develop.

What defines a great sales professional?

Great sales professionals consistently meet or exceed their sales targets, generate substantial profits, and develop a huge customer following. Great sales professionals believe in themselves and act in a confident manner, thereby instilling confidence in their customers. They know how to build immediate rapport with prospective buyers, qualify them, and make a great presentation after discovering their needs, desires, and financial constraints. They understand the importance of taking the customer out on a test drive, so they can strengthen their relationship and address the customer’s “hot buttons.” They are very good at negotiating and closing deals, but they also know that selling doesn’t end with the sale. They take great pains to ensure a perfect delivery, and they follow-up frequently with their buyers to ensure customer satisfaction, generate repeat business, and solicit referrals.

You know these sales professionals when you see them. They are the ones that are highly motivated and never stop learning, even after they reach the top. They sell not only the product, but the dealership and themselves. They don’t sit around waiting for their “ups,” but are always prospecting for new customers. They are the people you can’t afford to lose because they not only sell 20, 25, or 30 vehicles a month, but also take their customers with them when they go.

Great sales professionals are not just born, they can be developed

A common assumption is that all it takes is a great personality and basic product knowledge. Yet, most great sales performers like Joe Girard and Grant Cardone didn’t just emerge full-blown—they perfected their craft through years of training, self-improvement, and practice. With the right training, ongoing monitoring and development, and a positive and supportive work environment, the “Average Joe” can become a good sales person, and a good sales person can go from good to great.

Take Anthony, for example, a great sales professional at a large, successful dealership. Anthony consistently sells 30 vehicles a month, and his office displays many sales awards and glowing testimonials from customers. To become a top performer, Anthony has completed many sales training programs over the years, yet he continues to attend every seminar he can. And, every morning as he drives to work, he listens to top motivational and sales experts like Brian Tracy, Les Brown, and Dale Carnegie. He understands that staying on top of his game requires continuous learning and hard work.

Three strategies for developing great sales people

Most dealerships are too busy dealing with the day-to-day business of selling vehicles to invest in the initial and long-term development of their greatest resource—their sales professionals. Yet, this investment is the most cost-effective way to develop great sales people—period. Even if each of your sales people increased sales by just two to four units a month, how many more units you would sell over the course of a year? Now what if each salesperson were to increase his or her productivity from eight or ten vehicles a month to 15, 20, or 25? Your sales and profits would grow exponentially. This is very doable. Here are three basic strategies for hiring, training, and developing great sales people like George.

Strategy 1: Eliminate “hit-or-miss” hiring practices.

Hiring is a complex process that requires a lot of skill and time to get right. Most automotive dealerships are extremely busy, so they often take short-cuts, but making mistakes can be costly. In the long run, outsourcing advertising, screening, and reference checking can save you a lot of time and money. It can help you find the right people and stop the revolving door in your dealership. The increased productivity and longevity of your new hires will provide a quick return on investment—even with the first couple of sales. If you do your own hiring, here are a few tips to avoid wasting time, hiring weak performers, or mistaking “professional interviewers” for the real deal: Create attention-grabbing adds and post them on-line to attract strong candidates; set up formal screening criteria and have a couple of staff members review them to identify promising individuals and frame follow-up questions; use 20-minute phone calls to refine the candidate pool (if they don’t impress over the phone, they won’t in person); make sure you control the interview by asking effective questions and listening at least 20 percent of the time; and be sure to check out references as looks can be deceiving.

Strategy 2: Step up training for new hires.

Too many dealerships hire someone new, tell them to read the manufacturer’s product manual or view their video-tapes, give them a couple of hours of training, and send them out on the floor. “Newbies” need intensive training before they are ready to meet their first customer and represent your dealership. A few hours of training simply won’t prepare a new automotive sales person for the demands of the being on the floor. They need at least three days of intensive training before they are ready to meet prospective buyers, and this is above and beyond product knowledge. For the training to be effective, it should cover the psychology of sales, building personal relationships, the key steps to a sale, how to add value throughout the sales process, and strategies and resources for continuous learning and improvement.

Strategy 3: Provide advanced training for your seasoned sales personnel.

Most dealerships assume that their existing sales professionals have the knowledge, skills, and motivation they need to do a good job. According to market research, however, nine out of ten sales people don’t follow the key steps to a sale. That means even experienced sales people can benefit from additional training. Although most sales managers run weekly sales meetings aimed at improving productivity, few were trained as sales trainers, and even fewer have the time it takes to provide intensive and ongoing training and support. Sports teams have multiple coaches on staff, and even Fortune 500 companies bring in outside management consultants to enhance profitability. Don’t your sales managers deserve a TO as well? An outside trainer can offer new ideas, see things from a different angle, present a different face, and offer a distinctive point of view. What’s more, the right trainer can motivate and inspire your sales team, helping them boost their performance so that they dramatically improve your bottom line.

These three strategies will help you unleash the potential of your sales force, but they won’t necessarily prevent your great sales people from “jumping ship.” To further support and retain members of your sales team, you need to set up innovative performance management systems that reward excellent performance, encourage those who are making progress, and provide positive and constructive feedback to those who still need improvement. You also need to create a positive work environment in which employees feel respected and valued and collaboration, not competition, is the norm. By following all these strategies, you’ll avoid costly hiring mistakes, accelerate sales and profits, and stop the revolving door at your dealership.

The Myth of Hiring Experienced Sales People                                                                 

When most companies hire sales people, the major criteria usually includes having some years of experience selling in the same or a similar industry, and a good track record of good sales results.

However, if you were to look closer, these are not the critical success factors that will determine if the sales person will deliver results for you.

One key reason is that the market place that we are operating in is constantly changing. You will notice that:
• Customers are getting more and more demanding and knowledgeable;
• Competition is getting more and more intense;
• The things you sell are getting more and more complex, etc.

In some markets, the changes within a 5-year period can be so drastic that it’s beyond recognition.

So if you are hiring based on past experience, how do you know that what worked in the past is going to work in the future? The same factors that gave you success in the past are getting less and less relevant for today’s and the future’s challenges.

What about a good sales track record, you might ask. Surely, if a sales person has been consistently producing great results will still continue to produce great results.

Unfortunately, unlike many other professions, the sales profession is one where dealing with failures is essential to becoming a successful sales person. No successful sales person can claim that he or she has never been rejected by customers, or has never lost deals in an ongoing basis. In fact, just like in many negotiations, the better sales person knows when to “walk away” and seek other better prospective customers, while the weaker sales person hangs on too long to customers that are never going to buy.

Hence, if you see sales people who seem to have “perfect” track records in the sense that they always reach or exceed sales targets could be:
• Selling in a monopoly where customers have no choice but to buy from them;
• Entering the market in an early stage so that they got the biggest customers in that market;
• Selling for a well-established brand to loyal existing customers that really need little persuasion to buy

This is not to say that having the relevant experience and a good track record is not important to a sales person. It just means that having some years of sales experience and a track record is no indicator of future performance.

The Critical Behaviors that Drive Sales

While companies are always looking at sales figures to determine the success of their sales force, most of the time it is the sales process (i.e. how you sell) that determines the results you get. How well the sales process is being executed depends largely the habits and behaviors of each sales person.

Different companies will have different sales processes for different customers in different regions who are buying different product lines. Hence, the critical behaviors that drive sales success will vary from case to case. The sales processes that companies have can include:
1. Selling only to a few Strategic Accounts, and sales people will have to work through complex relationships so as to gain buy-in from all levels in the customer’s organization;
2. Constantly generating new leads and getting new customers to buy frequently; or
3. Having a balance of new business development and key accounts management so that sales people are getting both new and existing customers to buy from them with varying complexity, etc.

In reality, sales processes can get a lot more complicated as different customers in different markets have different needs that have to be satisfied in different ways. So what if you aren’t quite sure what is the sales process for the next sales person, here are some “generic” critical behaviors that apply to most sales processes (and which are found lacking in most sales people too):
• Constant prospecting to make sure the sales person fills up the pipeline. Most sales people, no matter how experienced, will prefer to deal with existing customers than to look for new ones. However, if the sales person shows the disciplined behavior to keep on prospecting for new prospects, that is a sign of a good hire;
• Constantly exploring what are the customers’ “pain” or problem areas, and pro-actively seeking to provide solutions or suggestions to customers to help them overcome those challenges;
• Making sure that the relationship with the customer are developed with all major key influence in the customer’s organizations, rather than relying on one single contact. Such sales people are also usually good developing relationships with less influential “informants” who can provide critical information
• Learning from mistakes and customer rejections so as to do better next time. In a similar vein, knowing when NOT to pursue a customer when it’s not worth the time or effort, AND spend time looking for new and better customers instead, etc.

Hence, during your interviews with candidates, you can ask the following questions:
• “If I were a prospective customer, and you want to do business with me, how would you go about making that first contact?” (Do a role play, and also ask the candidate what is his usual modus operandi)
• “What makes your customers buy from you instead of anybody else? Why have some other customers chosen NOT to buy from you?” (Note: if the candidate gives general answers like “because I provide good service”, probe in deeper by asking “what is good service”)
• “Typically, how many people do you have to communicate with before you can get your sale? Can you cite an example where you need to work through many contacts before getting the sale?” (Get the candidate to draw his customer’s organization chart if need be)
• “Are there any instances that you thought you probably have won the sale, but somehow lost it in the end? What do you think you can learn from such cases?” (Beware the candidate who’s very confident and tells you he knows his customer real well)
• “Are there times when you need to give up on a specific sale? What happened and what did you do then?” (Watch out for the candidate who claims “I never give up any sale!” It is a sign of poor priority management and qualifying skills)

Developing Competent Sales People

It may not be surprising that most if not all of your candidates fail in ALL of the above questions. It could well possible that even some of your existing experienced sales people fail some of those questions too. (Or else sales consultancies like us will be out of business very soon!)

The next question will be: if we then set such high standards that no candidates actually display the required critical behaviors, does that mean we don’t hire anyone?

The good news is that such critical sales behaviors can be taught and learned. In fact, high-performing sales people learned to become high-performers throughout their careers. Only a handful few high-performers are “naturals”.

Hence, while most candidates are unlikely to display the critical behaviors that will drive sales for you, you can pick those who display some of those behaviors, AND are willing to learn some new ways to make more sales, you then may have a winner in the near future.

Some companies are unwilling to invest time, effort and money to develop their new sales hires because of the following reasons:
1. “We expect the new sales hire to perform immediately, that’s why we hire them for their experience!”;
2. “We don’t have the time and resources to hand-hold these sales people who can’t perform”;
3. “If we teach them too much, they may turn around and work for our competitors.”

What these companies have to realize is that if they could hire the sales people who can produce immediate results, and don’t need any form of training or coaching, that’s great. However, such sales people are rare, and those few who are available will probably ask for a very high pay package. In any case, since prior experience and track records are never guarantee of success, companies might just have to train and develop their new sales hires so that they form critical sales habits and behaviors.

Finding talented, productive, and profitable sales professionals for the dealership can be time consuming and very tough cant it?

Training budgets have been cut back to the bone to preserve cash flow in these challenging economic times, so we cross our fingers and hope that good sales people are born and all we need to do is find them and recruit them!

One major obstacle is that often good sales people tend to stay loyal to their employer and rarely come on to the open market. If they do move, they tend to via the unadvertised market through referral and word of mouth. So it seems logical to ‘make’ or develop good sales people ourselves.

There seems to be is a lot of confusion regarding the terms ‘hunters and farmers’. Unfortunately it means different thing to different people. So what is a ‘hunter’ sales person? A broad definition is a sales person that thrives on generating new business in new clients. The problem is that on the whole ‘hunters’ lack motivation to nurture ongoing relationships and manage the associated administration of maintaining an existing client relationship. ‘Hunters’ can neglect clients as they search for the next big deal and the ‘buzz’ of cracking yet another new account.

This can of course be remedied by transferring the client over to a ‘farmer’ who excels in maintaining and developing relationships with existing clients. Each sales style is crucial in any organizations however, it can be cost prohibitive to have both styles covered by different people and a balance needs to be found.

Just recruiting ‘hunters’ can be a real problem as it can leave your existing clients neglected and frustrated and prone to seeking out alternative partners, your competition!

It is well know that it costs considerably more to attract and win new clients than maintain and care for existing clients. Whilst it is vital to have a fresh crop of clients developing at any one time it is important to ensure that the balance is right. Conversely just recruiting farmers can leave you exposed and reliant on too few clients and a dwindling pipeline of opportunity.

Ensuring that your sales team is united in its goal and have a shared and clear vision of what they are required to achieve is vital. Unfortunately, this is rarely communicated succinctly by management teams and whilst sales teams can appear productive and busy they may not truly be in alignment with the company’s strategic and tactical objectives.

What messages are you giving to your team? Are your remuneration and incentive schemes driving the desired behavior and motivation? How do you reward success and failure?

Many factors will affect sales teams’ performance. The following questions and suggestions may provide an insight in how to improve your sales team’s success.

How can I increase sales performance?

Work on developing confidence and overcome negative experiences and promote a positive attitude and the opportunity to improve and develop.