Are you focusing in the right direction?
In Parts 1 & 2, I challenged you to look critically at what you are doing and question 20thC assumptions around sales and incentives. If you think that it is just a question of hiring money oriented people, running ‘training’ and setting up the bonus scheme then you may be barking up the wrong tree. It might have been like that in the 20th century, but it no longer is.
What is your objective?
Easy – More wins, larger deals, and lower costs. You need an ROI that you can show; not only that, you need to retain good people. So how do you do that? Parts 1 and 2 explain that bonuses are tricky and do less than you think to pursue the main objective. Better to focus on the Clarity [State of Mind] of your team, and understand the research data. Some of the best data comes from CEB – read their 2 Challenger books to get a new perspective for 2017. They explain that the sale is down to the Commercial Insight that you give your customers, not your product, per se *. Your people need to coach their prospects not make friends of them. Clarity, or lack of it is the reason that sales performance varies day to day and person to person **. The most likely advocate for you inside an organisation is not the person you have a great relationship with but the sceptic, innovative and challenging individuals – once you have shown them something useful about their business that they hadn’t realised they are on your side.
What drives performance? What gets in the way?
You need Clarity to innovate; find the ‘Motivator’ in the client organisation who can drive the sale inside the organisation ***; tailor the pitch to the different stakeholders you have to convince; or teach the customer new things about their industry that the sale depends on *.
If they think your base salary or compensation scheme is unfair, or that they are not developing, or that you do not give them the tools to make the sale [eg the benefit of a coaching Sales Manager] then they will move – at a considerable cost to you.
Why does Clarity help?
Clarity is the state where our natural talents operate fully because we are not busy overthinking thoughts about frustration or disappointment or anxiety or pressure. Actually, it is our default state but easily overcome by all of the above so that our creativity, balance and innovation are overwhelmed. The winning formula is simple:
Clarity + Action = Results
For help with Clarity for your Sales Team talk to Nick: nick@gholdenphish.com.
* The Challenger Sale: Dixon & Adamson; Penguin Books UK 2013.
** Results, think less achieve more: Jamies Smart; John Wiley UK 2017
*** The Challenger Customer: Adamson, Dixon, Spenner & Toman; Penguin Books UK 2015.
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