Six Sales Transformation Tactics - Part Four

Six Sales Improvement Tactics That Are Actually Doable

There are countless resources out there on how to execute a sales transformation initiative, but often the suggestions in these guides are too broad and general to be applicable to most small to medium sized companies. 

Sales transformation strategies should be company specific, so any program that attempts to offer a universal game plan, one-size-fits-all, are useless. 

You need to connect with a team of sales professionals that have  a confident approach based on real experiences having done the same things you want to achieve for your company.  I like to call it a “been there done that” attitude of confidence that can be instilled in your team… and it will last and produce results.

Here’s a bit of confidence shared… tapping into our sales performance expertise library of experiences.  SIX practical actions you can implement now to shape and energize your sales transformation strategy.

1. Leverage Your Compensation Plan 
I’ve said this for years and years to CEOs… your sales compensation plan is not simply the cost of doing business. A more appropriate description is that your comp plan is the operating system on which your sales organization runs. From incentives, to revenue, and operating cost projections, your compensation plan drives and supports each of these functions.

It follows, then, that if you’re looking to overhaul your sales organization, you start with your comp plan. This is a persuasive and tangible form of change for your sales, tying sales reps’ goals to overall business strategy directly to the Revenue Forecast, in the most direct way—paychecks.

2. Pace out the Changes
Sales doesn’t live in a vacuum. A change to your sales organization can produce a ripple effect across other departments. Marketing and finance will likely be affected by any changes made during the transformation.  So, start small before you go big. It may make sense to focus on retooling one or two components in your sales organization first… like creating a new compensation plan and shifting territory assignments, key accounts and redefining prospecting.

3. Reshape the Customer Experience
When was the last time you evaluated your customer experience? Have you role played with your sales team in the last quarter? Are they selling bullet points on a box or actually selling solutions? 

Your reps and what they say are part of this customer journey, so taking a closer look is worth your time.

It’s easy to get caught up in the big sweeping strategies, but sales transformation can sometimes be as straightforward as making sure reps are using tried and true techniques like “challenger” selling, a tactic that places the sales rep in a position to teach customers something they don’t know. Remember, how you sell matters more than what you sell. 

4. Pay Reps What They’re Worth (or Not Worth)
Are you paying your best sales reps enough? Are you paying too much for poor performers? Without the proper benchmarking data, it’s difficult to know what you don’t know. For sales organizations, pay is intimately linked to performance. Pay too little and your best reps move on, taking their revenue generation skills with them. Pay too much and you’re operating in the red when production is not tied to the Revenue Forecast. Striking a balance isn’t just common sense. It’s good business practice.

Determining sales rep compensation is usually a combination of what worked in the past and shots in the dark. Your options are limited. You could make an educated guess using historical data. You could also use surveys to understand the market rates for compensation.

Use data to build baseline decisions about sales compensation plans. Using data from your industry, region, company size and annual sales levels will give you insight into what other companies are doing with compensation.  This will help you formulate a solid foundation for equitable comp plans. Using data, allows you to tweak compensation programs creating a healthier sales organization—dropping poor performers, incentivizing average reps to step up, and rewarding your best people.

5. Give Sales and Finance the Right Tools for the Job
Even if you haven’t heard the term “shadow accounting”, you’re likely to have experienced the practice out in the wild. Shadow accounting refers to those detailed commission records your sales reps keep to call out (often loudly and rightfully so) any discrepancy between what they’re expected to earn on a deal and the actual payout.

In the age of paper and spreadsheets, this practice made sense. But with sales performance management software readily available, (I recommend Xactly, Links below) the compensation process can be automated and shadow accounting will be a thing of the past. For your finance department, this means automated calculations, accurate payouts, and happy sales reps. Sales reps should receive monthly real-time data on their progress to goal, commissions earned and total accumulative monthly and year-to-date sales. The transformation here comes from freeing up your sales team to focus on selling—not being secondhand accountants.

6. Dangle the Carrot - Reps and Specific Goals
Use special incentives to align sales behavior with your business goals. You’d be surprised how many business challenges are overcome with the right incentives in place. For instance: if your client turnover is high, reconfiguring your compensation plan to compensate for this shortcoming may be your best bet at keeping your hard-earned business.

The same thinking applies to earning new business or up-selling. Incentives can be more than a reward. Incentives can be a solution.

Resources to Put These Tactics into Practice 
If you’re interested in implementing one or all of the above sales transformation tactics, below are some useful resources to help you 
get started:
As they say… Good Luck!  If you need assistance, why not consider engaging ENCORE! 2.5 to help you transform your sales organization?  Never hurts to chat (267.356.1949) or send an email (encore2pt5@gmail.com) explaining what you need.

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