7 Mistakes that cause high sales rep turn-over....

Sales rep turnover can be very costly for organizations, both in terms of hard costs (actual outlay of training and other dollars) and opportunity costs (lost future business). According to Gallup research conducted in 2006, five of the top predictors of turnover are:

1. The immediate manager
2. Poor fit for the job
3. Lack of commitment to quality

4. Pay and benefits
5. Connection to the organization, or to senior management

In addition to those mentioned by Gallup, there are two other causes of significance:

6. Poor hiring
7. Insufficient onboarding

Let’s look at each of these individually.

1. The Immediate Manager

The most common cause of sales rep turnover is a sour relationship with the direct manager. This relationship is critical, and if it doesn’t work well it will lead to a termination or resignation. One CFO commented, “People need to be appreciated for their hard work, and if the employee doesn’t feel this respect then he/she will leave.”

Sales managers’ main role is the development of their sales teams for maximum performance and results. There is a direct correlation between a sales professional’s success and the competence, value and mentoring abilities of his/her sales manager. Top managers make a habit of doing the following:

• Setting high yet achievable standards for their reps
• Helping their sales professionals develop their skills and improve their teams’ results
• Co-authoring short- and long-term sales goals with their employees
• Coaching and mentoring their employees to help them achieve superior results by implementing on-going development plans
• Developing highly productive coaching relationships with their people and understanding each salesperson’s key motivators
• Holding their teams accountable for the activities that will lead to the success and accomplishment of their sales goals

2. Poor Fit for the Job

If a salesperson doesn’t enjoy the type of sale that

his/her organization is engaged in, this will lead to turnover. If the salesperson doesn’t enjoy sales at all then he/she will not last in that role.

3. Lack of Commitment to Quality

Salespeople will take issue with their company if they don’t feel that the company stands behind its products. That is, when they make a sale the organization can’t support the delivery of quality goods and services. Sometimes the fault for this can rest with the employee if he/she is overpromising what the organization is capable of delivering.

4. Pay and Benefits

Many employees leave their companies because of insufficient pay or benefits. Although Frederick Herzberg’s research on motivating factors shows that an increase in pay has less impact than a decrease, it is still an important factor in employee turnover. One thing to note however is during exit interviews people often identify pay as the reason for leaving, as this is an answer that will have little impact on the individual’s reputation when they leave the company.

5. Connection to the Organization, or to Senior Management

Employees like to feel a connection to the overall organization. They like to understand and feel part of the vision, mission, strategy and key priorities. With this in mind, be clear about what you’re trying to accomplish as an organization – not just financial goals, but also purpose. What do you aspire to bring to the world as a company? What kind of a culture do you want to create in order to do that? What will the organization look, feel and sound like if you’re embodying that mission and culture? How will you measure success? Once you’ve clarified your future consistently, focus on keeping that vision top-of-mind and working together to achieve it.

6. Poor Hiring

If sales success is approximately 50% talent, then performance conditions account for the remaining 50%. Hiring someone with the wrong talent will effectively remove half the equation. Poor hiring could be caused by a deficient process, mismatched profile of skills and experience, or both.

Deficient Process: If the sales manager is under a lot of pressure to fill the vacancy quickly, rush decisions could be made. Is the policy of your organization to respond to all candidates within a certain time period? How many candidates do you need to see in order to know you are getting a representative sample? What about job try-outs or probationary periods? These may lessen the risk associated with hiring.

Profile Issues: In hiring the right person the sales manager should consider both expected accountabilities AND required competencies. A thorough review of this profile should be done by both salespeople and managers before it is put in place. It’s helpful to outline unwanted characteristics as well. What allowances have you made to ensure you attract the very best talent?

7. Poor On-Boarding

The goal of an effective on-boarding program is to get the new salesperson up to full productivity as quickly as possible. A strong on-boarding program should be used as a hiring tool during the recruiting phase as a way to attract potential candidates. Consideration should be made to get the new hire up to speed within six months including a structured schedule for their first three months of employment. Sales managers need to be held accountable for the use of the on-boarding program and laying out very clear expectations of both activity and results within these first six months.

First line sales managers are the key to diagnosing sales force turnover problems and identifying and implementing solutions for reducing turnover among all three performance segments. Managers are the ones who have to determine if a low performing salesperson has future potential or not. They are the ones who must coach and develop a salesperson to realize his/her potential. They are also the ones who can find the right motivators for holding on to high-performing salespeople.

Sincerely,  

Chris Wilkinson.

Certified Business Behaviour & Attitudes Analyst.

Business Coach.

Tel: (905) 275-2907 (Mississauga--Canada).

                 E-mail: buspilot@bell.net

8 crucial sales skills

 Skill #1: Building the buyer-seller relationship*. Salespeople need to develop a better understanding of the buying process that customers actually follow-the real decisions they make, and when they are made. Then salespeople need to match their sales process with the customer's buying process. When this is done, salespeople begin to walk arm-in-arm with the customer as they arrive at the best possible solution.

Skill #2: Planning the sales call*. Most companies today lack a well-defined sales process. Very few have documented the sales practices that lead to b commitments from customers. As a consequence, salespeople don't plan sales calls properly. For instance, every call should end in some kind of commitment from the customer-an agreement to do something that will move the process forward.

Skill #3: Asking the right questions*. Most salespeople do not ask the right types of questions, even if they prepare questions prior to the sales call, which most don't. The impact of poor questioning skills is enormous. It leads to resistance in the form of stalls and objections, bad presentations that offer improper solutions, failure to differentiate from the competition-and missed sales opportunities.

Skill #4: Business acumen. If you're going to help your customer become more successful you need to know how businesses work in general, how your customer's industry works, how your customer addresses their target market and how your firms offerings can help them better serve their own customers. Without business skills, you'll never have the credibility needed to sell

Skill #5: Actively listening. Sales pros miss important cues and information by talking too much themselves and their products. It's much more important to shut up and let the customer talk. Yes, you should guide the conversation, but then listen and digest properly we learn so much about what the customer really wants, so that you can position your offering appropriately.

Skill #6: Presenting meaningful solutions*. Most salespeople claim that this is the skill they are best at. In fact, we as managers tend to hire people who have "the gift of gab." In reality, quality is far more important than quantity when it comes to making presentations. When salespeople zero in on presenting only specific solutions to previously agreed-upon needs, they rarely fail.

Skill #7: Gaining Commitments*. If you really think about it, the only reason to employ salespeople is to gain customer commitment. Yet, when asked, most salespeople admit that this is their weakest skill. Research suggests that almost two thirds of salespeople fail to ask for commitment on sales calls. Any effective sales training program must have a solid solution for this problem.

Skill #8: Managing Your Emotions. The way sales pro explain to themselves the causes of their successes and failures is vitally important. Developing a style that sees adversity as temporary and isolated builds the mental toughness, emotional resilience and patience to bounce back from setbacks and be proactive when the time is right.

Sincerely,  

Chris Wilkinson.

Certified Business Behaviour & Attitudes Analyst.

Business Coach.

Tel: (905) 275-2907 (Mississauga-CANADA).

E-mail: buspilot@bell.net

30 (+19 more) Employee Exit interview questions

1.        Tell me about how you've come to decide to leave?

2.         What is your main reason for leaving?

3.        What are the other reasons for your leaving?

4.        Why is this important, or so significant for you?

5.     Within the (particular reason to leave) what was it that concerned you particularly?

6.      What could have been done early on to prevent the situation developing/provide a basis for you to stay with us?

7.     How would you have preferred the situation(s) to have been handled?

8.     What opportunities can you see might have existed for the situation/problems to have been averted/dealt with satisfactorily?

9.     What can you say about the processes and procedures or systems that have contributed to the problem(s)/your decision to leave?

10.    What specific suggestions would you have for how the organization could manage this situation/these issues better in future?

11.   How do you feel about the organization?

12.   What has been good/enjoyable/satisfying for you in your time with us?

13.   What has been frustrating/difficult/upsetting to you in your time with us?

14.   What could you have done better or more for us had we given you the opportunity?

15.   What extra responsibility would you have welcomed that you were not given? 

16.   How could the organization have enabled you to make fuller use of your capabilities and potential?

17.   What training would you have liked or needed that you did not get, and what effect would this have had?

18.   How well do think your training and development needs were assessed and met?

19.   What training and development that you had did you find most helpful and enjoyable?

20.   What can you say about communications within the organization/your department?

21.   What improvements do you think can be made to customer service and relations?

22.   How would you describe the culture or 'feel' of the organization?

23.    What could you say about communications and relations between departments, and how these could be improved?

24.   Were you developed/inducted adequately for your role(s)?

25.   What improvement could be made to the way that you were inducted/prepared for your role(s)?

26.   (For recent recruits of less than a year or so:) What did you think about the way we recruited you? How did the reality alter from your expectations when you first joined us? How could we have improved your own recruitment? How could your induction training have been improved?

27.   How could you have been helped to better know/understand/work with other departments necessary for the organization to perform more effectively?

28.   What can you say about the way your performance was measured, and the feedback to you of your performance results?

29.   How well do you think the appraisal system worked for you?

30.   What would you say about how you were motivated, and how that could have been improved?

…AND 19 more sample questions

Call Business Pilot @ (905) 275-2907.

TODAY!

Sincerely,

Chris Wilkinson                

Certified Business Behaviour & Attitudes Analyst.

Business Coach.

Tel: (905) 275-2907 (Mississauga).

E-mail: buspilot@bell.net

Here's how to uncover your USP (as in: unique selling proposition) and use it to power up your sales:

Put yourself in your customer's shoes.

Too often, entrepreneurs fall in love with their product or service and forget that it is the customer's needs, not their own, that they must satisfy. Step back from your daily operations and carefully scrutinize what your customers really want. Suppose you own a pizza parlor. Sure, customers come into your pizza place for food. But is food all they want? What could make them come back again and again and ignore your competition? The answer might be quality, convenience, reliability, friendliness, cleanliness, courtesy or customer service.

Remember, price is never the only reason people buy. If your competition is beating you on pricing because they are larger, you have to find another sales feature that addresses the customer's needs and then build your sales and promotional efforts around that feature.

 Know what motivates your customers' behavior and buying decisions.

Effective marketing requires you to be an amateur psychologist. You need to know what drives and motivates customers. Go beyond the traditional customer demographics, such as age, gender, race, income and geographic location, that most businesses collect to analyze their sales trends. For our pizza shop example, it is not enough to know that 75 percent of your customers are in the 18-to-25 age range. You need to look at their motives for buying pizza -- taste, peer pressure, convenience and so on.

Cosmetics and liquor companies are great examples of industries that know the value of psychologically oriented promotion. People buy these products based on their desires (for pretty women, luxury, glamour and so on), not on their needs.

Uncover the real reasons customers buy your product instead of a competitor's.
As your business grows, you'll be able to ask your best source of information: your customers. For example, the pizza entrepreneur could ask them why they like his pizza over others, plus ask them to rate the importance of the features he offers, such as taste, size, ingredients, atmosphere and service. You will be surprised how honest people are when you ask how you can improve your service.

Since your business is just starting out, you won't have a lot of customers to ask yet, so "shop" your competition instead. Many retailers routinely drop into their competitors' stores to see what and how they are selling. If you are really brave, try asking a few of the customers after they leave the premises what they like and dislike about the competitors' products and services.

Once you have gone through this three-step market intelligence process, you need to take the next -- and hardest -- step: clearing your mind of any preconceived ideas about your product or service and being brutally honest. What features of your business jump out at you as something that sets you apart? What can you promote that will make customers want to patronize your business? How can you position your business to highlight your USP?

Do not get discouraged. Successful business ownership is not about having a unique product or service; it's about making your product stand out -- even in a market filled with similar items.

Sincerely,  

Chris Wilkinson.

Certified Business Behaviour & Attitudes Analyst.

Business Coach.

Tel: (905) 275-2907 (Mississauga--CANADA).

E-mail: buspilot@bell.net

10 Reasons NOT to set objectives in your business….

                               

• Allows managers off the hook.
• Allows us to “save face” in front of managers.
• Enables top managers to overpay themselves.
• It’s hard work and not always pleasant.
• Potentially opens to ridicule.
• Moves us out of our comfort zone.
• It’s an excuse not to take action.
• It’s time consuming.
• I cover all my mistakes by raising my prices.
• It makes it harder to determine if I am effectively filling the president’s role.

...........and 18 strong Reasons to manage by objective:

• Clarifies what the owner actually wants.
• Gives meaning to overall goals.
• Provides targets and time lines.
• Provides focus.
• Causes meaningful action.
• Concentrates all effort & limited resources on critical areas.
• Causes prioritization & pruning.
• Enables us to measure our progress.
• Causes owners/managers to be held accountable.
• Creates SOLID targets & timeframes.
• All members of the team will pull the same way.
• Fits all the management pieces together.
• Managers know what is expected of them.
• Establishes performance and compensation levels.
• Department objectives are an exact sub-part of total objectives.
• Objectives keep all managers informed of company’s direction.
• Imposes self-control on owners/managers.
• Managers know each other’s goals in addition to his own.

Sincerely,  

Chris Wilkinson.

Certified Business Behaviour & Attitudes Analyst.

Business Coach.

Tel: (905) 275-2907 (Mississauga-CANADA).

E-mail: buspilot@bell.net