Energizing the NEW Sales Team

By Steven K. Haught, MBA

I know these past 2 months have been challenging times for everyone who sells goods and services for their company. And let’s not kid ourselves, these past few weeks have been more laid-back, less intense with a relaxed focus than before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the economy, and your company.

But now, as America’s workforce begins to return to the work place or you continue to work remotely, the rhythms of the sales process will be changing.  Levels of performance and activity will be escalating to get your companies business—revenue production, back on track.

Now more than ever you must pay close attention to the details of your prospecting.  You must micro-manage your metrics.  Love your CRM.  You need to be on top of your sales activities like never before.  

Be prepared to answer questions with specific details about your pipeline when asked by your sales manager.  Sales managers, you need to consolidate the sales teams activities and expected closing dates of deals, so you can deliver a comprehensive summary to the CEO.

Specifically, for salespeople and sales managers, this means tracking three key metrics daily within the data capture fields within your CRM:

1. Your Sales Velocity — how fast will your pipeline produce results
2. Your Gap to Goal —or your pipeline value-size to meet forecasts
3. Your Activity — number of calls, connects, and opportunities that are created, expected next steps, closing dates, etc.

If you track those three on a daily basis, you’ll spot the positive and negative trends in your activity profile.  Numbers always tell a story if they are properly and accurately captured. The reason the sales teams must be intensely tracking these three metrics… you need to know very quickly if you are trending up, flat, or down.

If you’re trending up, don’t just be thankful you are — ask yourself why? Are there certain markets that are being more receptive or more successful, and if so, can you tilt your efforts towards those types of prospects?

If you’re trending flat, ask yourself if that is a good thing or bad thing? Flat may be okay, but you need to prove it. Does it mean that your business is holding steady and your clients are engaging with you on a regular basis? Or does it mean that there’s a change coming?  The superiors in your organization will want to know if it means you have a “gap” in time and effort in feeding your pipeline?  In other words, you haven’t been feeding your pipeline consistently.

If you’re trending down, evaluate how you can correct the situation immediately. Look for trends and assess how you can reorient to a new market, new product, new message, or just get your activity kicked into high gear.  Trending down can be a dangerous place to find yourself coming out of the two-month pandemic hiatus.

This is not the time to think you can return to the old way you did your job just two months ago.  Those days are most likely gone for good. This is a time, to go the extra mile and make sure your management knows that you are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the business operating and your sales/revenue pipeline producing.

Ramp up your effort and track opportunities and activities in your CRM as evidence that you’re not just going through the motions of your job,  but you are undertaking more work than had previously been expected. 

This is not the time to fight the CRM, measurements, reporting or coaching. This is the time to suck it up and to actually show proof to your executive team that you’re doing high-quality work that is valuable and will produce results.

Your sales metrics are important to track on a daily basis. You have to be a micro-manager, able to explain the details of every contact with prospects. I know some of you didn’t need to be a micro-manager during the best of times, but now, as businesses across America are re-starting and recovering, now is the time for you to get very serious with your projections and forecasts. 

This is the time to be a team player. Prove yourself to be truly indispensable.  In the past, if you were a proven top performer, you could get away without being a team player. You could ignore the CRM, reporting, activity reviews, and the like.  Management turned a blind eye, as you did things your way and produced results.  Sloppy work and ignoring the CRM, were tolerated because you brought in the most sales, not because they liked you more than other salespeople!

Post COVID-19 is a time when American businesses will be evaluating every aspect of how revenue is produced.  There is no room for the lone wolves doing their own thing, just because they brought in huge deals. Not now. Top producers have to be that go-to person that everybody in the organization loves to work with, trusts, models after, and counts on to get the work done. 

Think of this way… if a worst-case scenario arises and you lose your sales job due to down-sizing, you will have built a new team-player attitude, anchored by the right habits and reputation.  You will have positioned yourself for the best sales opportunities that will be emerging during the long economic recovery.
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Article by Steven K. Haught, Founder and President  
of ENCORE! 2.5, a business advisory consultancy. 

GET IN TOUCH…
Questions? Call 267.356.1949 to speak to the ENCORE! 2.5 Group 
Founder/President or Email at — encore2pt5@gmail.com
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