To maximize the revenue your sales staff members generates, focus their selling energies. When everything is important, nothing is important. So pick one thing they should chase and let them loose. Reward them well for catching it and success will follow. Determining what that one thing should be requires an analysis of your sales and revenue-generation priorities.
For example: a software company makes its money selling product licences, consulting services and renewals/upgrades. Its sales goals ramp up quarterly, with the Q4 goal being the biggest. At the start of the year, the team was lean and already very busy. In Q2 it brought on three temps and trained them to sell renewals and upgrades to existing customers. This freed up the tenured reps to sell the more complex licence and consulting products. The incremental revenue it produced, along with the uptick in licence and consulting revenue, helped the company reach the sales quota.
A sport eyewear company realizes most of its revenue in the sunny summer months. Unfortunately, last year’s early summer was cloudy and retail sales stalled. Knowing things would brighten up, the company focused the team on opening new accounts. Using modest initial orders for the new sites, it sowed the seeds for net new revenue generation when the sun came out. In both of these instances, sales leadership did a few simple but important things that set the stage for the initiatives to work.
Create initiatives:
First, the companies created incentives for their people.
Both companies also set parameters for their respective programs to promote the right selling behaviours and avoid post-initiative pains.
Set targets co-operatively:
The eyewear company set the targets for new account openings co-operatively between the reps and their managers. This ensured the goals were realistic. Criteria for the quality of new accounts and order size were also set. This prevented product loading and potential credit nightmares at the end of the season.
The software company set its goals similarly. It let the temps run for four weeks prior to the initiative to get their feet under them. Then, each rep was given an equal-sized customer list and the team came up with a renewal and upgrade goal to hit.
For the tenured reps, a different approach was taken. Because the composition of each territory was different, a common goal did not make sense. Co-operative goal setting was again done, but this time the goal for new licences and consulting services varied by territory. As such, reps had goals they could realistically make if they ran hard enough.
Measure results:
Next, both companies set up measurement systems that were simple and transparent. Sales results for the initiatives were posted weekly for all to see. Praise and encouragement were also given publicly. Support in the form of peer-to-peer coaching was given for those who were struggling to reach their goals.
Set the stage for next time:
Finally, when the initiatives had reached their end, all incentives were paid out in full and on time. This kept the behaviour and the reward tightly tied, setting the stage for the next time. Chasing too many things at once leads to goal diffusion and inferior results. For great performance, get your team focused.