Pivotal Perspectives

At the beginning of July, Pivotal Advisors and The Sales Association hosted a Webinar focused on the importance of sales plans. Many sales reps would laugh off the idea. To a great many, sales plans are a mere formality used by organizations at the start of the year to provide forecast data to C-level executives. Once those forecasts are adjusted to acceptable levels, what happens?  Typically, the plans are filed away only to be glanced at quarterly, biannually or never again.

But the most effective sales managers and reps know that a well-devised and well-used sales plan can be an extremely valuable tool to better plan, operate, communicate and perform – no matter what size the organization.  And we are not talking about sales planning that requires high-tech solutions or complex sales formulas. Basic, simple sales plans that track both sales activities (meetings, proposals, closed deals, etc.) and sales numbers (monthly and annual revenue goals) are as effective as any sophisticated planning tool or application on the market. In fact, the real key to sales plan success is not the format of the sales plan or the size of it, it’s the quality of the content.

To give you insight into the many sales planning tips offered in the Webinar, we are happy to share with you the Top Four Advantages of Practical Sales Plans below. If you would like to learn even more advantages and get specific input on what makes a sales plan effective, you can listen to the Webinar online here. And before we list the “Top Four,” we would like to thank The Sales Association for co-hosting the Webinar and all attendees for sharing their time and input.

Top Four Advantages of Practical Sales Plans

Advantage 1: Gives Reps a Well-planned Sales Activity Schedule
The fact is most sales representatives are creating sales plans each year. They fill in the names of accounts they are working on, those they hope to win and even some long shots just to be sure the plan leads to a strong bottom-line number for their managers and their managers’ managers. But if you ask those same reps how confident they are that their actual sales year will mirror their sales plan, most will have the same reply: “Not very.”

The true value of a sales plan is not the bottom line number it points to but the activities it maps out to get to that number. How many meetings do I need to average per week? How many proposals per month? How many deals should I be closing per month? All of these details can be worked into a simple sales plan, starting with the revenue goal and using prior performance to determine the amount of weekly and monthly activity required to achieve the revenue.

In addition, sales plans should focus on activities as much as on revenue to account for the natural differences in sales reps. Some sales reps succeed at selling bigger accounts and don’t need to close as many new deals per year. Other reps may be excellent at selling lots of small deals. Some reps may be adept at converting meetings into proposals. Others might need more meetings to get enough proposals into the pipeline. Well implemented sales plans allow sales reps individualized road maps for putting in the work needed to achieve revenue goals.

Advantage 2: A Means for Seeing Where Activity Adjustments Are Needed
Sales reps can use their sales plans to see how they are meeting their activity benchmarks in terms of getting meetings, securing proposals, making cold calls, etc.  Where performance is lacking they can adjust or ask for help. Where performance is strong, they can see what activities are working best and replicate them for continued positive results.

Advantage 3: Provides a Roadmap for Achieving Organizational Goals
Sales plans should go beyond the numbers to map out the actual sales work—calling, visiting, presenting, demonstrating, etc.—that goes into successful selling. For managers that means, they know exactly what each individual should be doing to meet those goals. Rather than making general inquiries to their reps, “Have you increased your pipeline, Steve?” managers can get very specific, “Steve, will you be able to meet your three meeting per week goal this month?”

It’s important to mention that sales plans don’t track every moment or contact in the sales process. It’s too time-consuming and such information doesn’t yield valuable insight. Instead, sales managers need to determine the best indicators of sales success for their organization and build them into the sales plans. For some companies, meetings and proposals may be the best indicators. For others, it’s cold calls and demos. Whatever those early indicators of strong sales performance are, managers should make sure they are limited to only two or three so they can be well monitored by sales reps and managers alike.

Advantage 4: Clearly Identifies Coaching Needs
Activities-based sales plans make it easy for sales managers to identify coaching needs among sales reps. If sales plans reveal that a rep is good at securing lots of meetings but only occasionally gets to the pricing/proposal phase, the coaching need is clear: It’s time to review the sales person’s presentation skills and sales pitch to find out where prospects might be losing interest. Another rep may be good at securing meetings and generating proposal opportunities but the average deal size might be too small. Here’s an opening for a manager to help coach a sales rep to try for bigger opportunities or learn to generate more from each account.

The sales plan not only helps managers identify opportunities to assist and coach their staff, it also can measure improvement to show whether or not the coaching is working and if sales reps are making the needed adjustments in order to achieve business goals.

Again, these are just a few of the advantages of strong sales plans. We hope you have time to listen to the Webinar to hear more and see examples of how sales plans can be used to better perform and better manage. To get an example of a winning sales plan, e-mail me at gbraun@pivotaladvisors.com and we will be glad to forward one to you and your team.

If you’re a sales manager, you can’t get it all done. As long as the laws of the universe keep the day 24 hours long, you cannot fulfill all the management, sales, marketing, coaching, networking and administrative tasks thrown in your direction. What you can do is win more time for the most important work you need to do—the tasks that boost team productivity and performance, resulting in more leads, more sales opportunities and more business wins.

Early this April, Pivotal Advisors partnered with The Sales Management Association to host a Webinar to give sales managers specific insight into how they can win more time for strategic, team- and sales-cultivating work. Titled “Visibility for the CEO, Sanity for the Sales Manager,” the Webinar was an opportunity for us to share proven best practices in managing up. It’s easy to get distracted from revenue-driving activities when one-off requests come in from your senior manager. But when those requests are frequent, brief distractions turn into giant gaps in your productivity and your ability to manage, develop and motivate your sales team. Our Webinar looked at how getting the right information and visibility to senior leaders can win sales managers more time to focus on team building and profit-driving  work in addition to earning them the credibility to say “no” to non-critical requests for their time.

The Webinar is currently online and you can follow this link to listen at your leisure. However, because leisurely moments are so rare for sales managers, we have also summarized below the three best practices in managing up discussed in the Webinar. Just a quick once over and sales managers can get back to work with techniques for gaining more time for the most important, results-driving sales management tasks: sales rep coaching, strategic planning and discerning participation in sales efforts.

Sales Manager Insights: Three Best Practices in Successfully Managing Up

Provide the Right Reports
If your senior manager is constantly asking for data and figures outside of the regular reports you are providing, you are not providing the right reports or you are not providing enough information. A senior manager who feels like he/she isn’t getting the full story does not trust the information you provide.

Sit down with your senior manager and determine exactly what information is needed (content), how often (frequency) and how he/she wants to see it (format). Then build a report and reporting schedule that delivers that information.  This process allows senior managers to think through exactly which numbers are important to them and gives you one, valuable reporting tool that meets those needs.  That’s not to say that one-off requests won’t occur, but this process will cut them dramatically while giving your boss information he/she can trust. If the requests start to creep up again, revisit the reporting process and content with your senior manager once more.

Pivotal Advisors also strongly advises that your reports to senior managers give anecdotal sales team insights to demonstrate how sales are progressing. In addition, add a risks and surprises column to inform senior managers of any unexpected events or issues that could be putting accounts in jeopardy.

Ensure the Best, Most Accurate Data
Many managers—both senior and sales—do not trust the data in the sales management or CRM systems. How accurate is the data you are reporting up to senior management? If you’re not certain of the quality of the data, run a historical analysis and verify it. The problem with unreliable data is that it causes senior managers to rely on you to hunt down and vet the data for them. Work with sales staff to ensure information is reported accurately, on time and with integrity. If people are trying to sugarcoat results, put an end to it to ensure the reports you run represent the work and performance of your team. If the reports are true and the data clean, senior leaders will trust them and send you fewer questions and request for additional information.

Practice Saying No
Your senior leader may ask you to participate in panels and attend numerous company meetings which greatly limit your time for team development and revenue-driving activities. Rather than taking them all on, analyze your calendar and agree only to the tasks that are truly important. No senior manager wants their top sales leader in a meeting room all day. If you find a large portion of your time is in meetings (say 20% or more) sit down with your senior manager and explain that you will need to say no to more meetings so you have more time for critical fieldwork, like sales and coaching.

And if you are asked why you, as a manager, are so dedicated to fieldwork, share this: The study “Redefining Sales Manager Excellence” from the Corporate Executive Board found that a minimum amount of mentoring/coaching (even poorly done) can improve bottom-line results by 19%. Consider then, what just an average amount of coaching will achieve!

If you are like most managers we talk to, you’ll find our advice compelling, but not exactly applicable to your circumstances—there is no chance you could or would tell your boss, “No.” If your senior leader is, let’s just say, really tough, and would not take no for an answer, you’re not alone.  However, we have seen on many occasions sales managers explain to their bosses how they want to focus their time—working in the field, developing team members, etc.—and their plan for creating more of this time. You may be surprised to learn that the senior leader, even the very strong-minded boss, almost always agrees to the plan.  The fact is, most of the time your senior leader has no idea how much time he or she takes away from your day. So, explain your day, what you need to accomplish and the disruptive effect numerous one-off requests have on your schedule and focus. Few senior leaders, even yours, can ignore the advantages that come with helping you get the time needed to improve sales team performance and results.

Can you relate to this common sales organization predicament? Six months ago you promoted “Bob,” an outstanding sales rep who has great skills and the respect of the entire sales team to be a sales manager. Today, Bob is busier than ever — out on the road with the other reps, helping to close their deals. The new sales rep hired to replace Bob is struggling, generating less revenue than Bob made in the role. The rest of the sales team is producing about the same numbers they were six months ago making the net result of the promotion a loss because no one is replacing the revenue Bob brought in as an individual contributor.

This is a tale as old as time — or at least as old as cold calling. Businesses have the best of intentions in promoting a sales star to manage a sales team. They want to reward performance, retain a loyal and talented team member and leverage the demonstrated skills of one of their best business developers to improve the overall skills and performance of the sales organization. The problem is that outstanding sales skills and business development talents do not transform into great management skills after a promotion. Not without a focus on developing those management skills.

Without guidance, the Bobs of the world will typically only do what they do best: sell. They rush from account to account, helping to close deals because this is what they know how to do. While some sales reps may glean lessons by seeing the work of these sales-oriented managers firsthand, many learn to get a deal close to complete and then call in Bob to finish the job, thus halting their own sales development. Frustration (the kind that can erode morale) is common as sales reps feel Bob “just takes things over.”  In addition, Bob is rewarded for being the closer allowing him to be the hero.

Can your business avoid this pattern and still cultivate internal talent to successfully lead sales teams? Yes is often the answer if businesses are willing to take the following steps to identify, develop and support new sales managers.

Watch for a Team Mentality – The best sales managers get great satisfaction from the success of others. When looking to promote from within your sales ranks watch for signs of team orientation. Does the sales rep have a record of willingly partnering with others for the greater good of the business? Does the candidate support colleagues in their efforts and openly share tips and opportunities? Is she/he good at managing the administrative side of sales operations? Use these questions and careful observation to identify candidates who will be able to adjust from measuring job success based on the revenue they bring in to measuring success based on how much they boost the performance of each team member.

Commit to Development – The skills it takes to manage a group, motivate people and coach are vastly different than the skills it takes to sell. Managers must be taught how to “coach” to develop the skills of their team members rather than “direct” or simply tell their reps what to do.  They also need to encourage performance by setting clear expectations, holding people accountable, the value and skill of delegation, how to manage conflict, and how to prioritize their time in a very different way.  . Rather than hoping for a sales manager to master these skills through sheer determination or the painful process of trial and error, invest in a more formal development process for your sales leaders.  Also, keep in mind we aren’t talking about something that happens in a two-day class, but a combination of education and on the job activities that create strong, routine habits.

Define Expectations Early & Measure Them Regularly - If you are like most companies, you probably do not sit new sales managers down and tell them exactly what you expect. The first thing every new sales manager should hear is, “Your job is not to do it yourself, but rather to coach and improve performance so your team improves.” They need to understand that the new measure of success is not just an overall revenue number but the marked improvement of each member of the sales team. All sales people—from reps to managers to CEOs are motivated by performance goals. Tap into that desire to succeed by clearly outlining the new measures of success, giving your new manager the right goals to aspire to and measuring and rewarding accomplishments.

Would adding these management development and evaluation best practices to the way you currently operate be a serious departure from how your business works today? If so, it’s time to look at how you have been preparing and supporting sales managers. They are likely struggling and now is your chance to help them truly become leaders while making a big, lasting impact on the sales team AND your overall results.