Management

Selling in a tough economy will separate those salespeople that ‘can’ and those that ‘can't’.

As a sales manager you need to know what to do when the economy starts to hit the brakes.

• How do you ensure your sales team achieves their sales targets when the market is flat?
• How do you as the sales leader plan to achieve your sales budget when there is so much indecision and fear in the market?
• Think about it, do you really know how each of your salespeople are going perform in these troubled times?

The trouble is that we start discussing things in January, finalise plans sometime around April, it then takes a couple of months to get people and budgets in place by which time we’re into the summer holidays. So it’s hardly surprising then that we really get going on our annual plan sometime around September, we haven’t a hope of delivering the income that our January discussions envisaged.

If you have ever watched or participated in dog training you may have realised that most of the training is actually focused on training the owner to behave in the right way, that then enables the dog to respond appropriately.

A mistake too many salespeople make is not keeping in touch with former clients. It’s not uncommon for past clients to come to a point where they need your product or service again but don’t remember how to get in touch with you. They are more likely to have your competitors’ information handy.

(Your competitors are still calling on your client even though you are not).

As a sales trainer with Sandler Training, I spend a lot of time talking to my clients and I get paid to work with them in four areas of their business: Strategy, Structure, Staff and Skills. Because I spend hours talking to them, I learn quite a bit. And despite that fact, they still manage to surprise me with the questions they ask me.

Small business owners tend to stay small because they do not install systems and processes into their business. Most owners want to hire “experienced” sales people. The mentality is to hire someone, teach them about their products and services, then expect the person to “go sell”. What’s the problem? If we hire experienced sales people, once they learn the product or service, they should be good to go, right?