What’s the goal of sales management? Leaving aside the obvious goal of having their team make quota, if we take a people-based approach, it’s this: to give sales people the tools and capability to self-correct their own performance. 

To become self-correcting however, salespeople need to understand what’s important, which activities matter and what is expected in terms of measuring progress, reporting, diagnosing and strategizing. They also need to have access to a weekly meeting routine that gradually creates a climate of support and encourages self-correction rather than a dependence on constant direction from a manager. And the more sales people who become self-correctors, the more people on the team there are to discourage under-performers. 

There are four key moves that sales managers can make that will transform the usefulness of the weekly sales meeting, and help create a team of self-correctors and self-managers who grow in self-awareness and get hooked on autonomy and self-confidence.

1. Get the salesperson to bring the meeting to the meeting

 Most sales managers bring the meeting to the meeting. They prepare numbers, graphs and reports. As far as the audience is concerned, it’s the manager who does the bulk of the work. Therefore, the salespeople don’t come to the meeting prepared with the right information, questions, or answers. From the start, the salesperson sees the meeting as almost an accounting exercise that is for the manager or worse, for management.

This meeting will instantly be more effective if the manager stops bringing the meeting to the meeting. Instead, the manager should get the sales person to bring the meeting to the meeting.  

What do I mean by that? The salesperson should be prepared to bring their forecast, data, information, and reports. Rather than waiting for the manager – or management - to present the “results” the individual sales person gives both the overview and the detail.

Ideally, the meeting can occur without preparation by the manager.

So, what should the salesperson focus on?

• Giving an accurate forecast that is evidence-based.
• Diagnosing the health of their own opportunities.
• Strategizing opportunities with the team/manager .

When a sales person brings the meeting to the meeting, they need to know what you – the manager – have set as the opening issue or question. This is where you can begin to set the scene, in terms of what matters and what’s important.

2. Teach the salesperson how to tell an objective sales story

 When you’ve been in sales for even a relatively short time, you learn how to tell a sales story. And we tell that story like we would relate any story or social interaction; we decide what to emphasize, what to leave out, what to dramatize, and what’s important. In fact, we don’t really tell the story; we spin it. This does not work when you need to tell an accurate sales story, and especially not across ten or more opportunities. In sales, stories that are spun are inaccurate and take too long.

Salespeople need to learn how to diagnose their own sales. So the manager needs to teach the salesperson how to objectively tell a sales story.

Telling an objective sales story starts with looking for answers to these two questions:

• What is the most effective next step to close this sale within the forecast period?
• When will that happen?

I’m not saying these are the only questions worth asking, but it is specifically these questions that keep the focus on the income-potential of each opportunity and the sales pipeline. It’s these questions that convey Commander’s Intent; they keep each salesperson focused on an end goal, while leaving room for individual initiative and creativity along the way in terms of detailed selling moves.

This approach works for any sale, large or small, with a short or long cycle, or for a product or service. (Yes, more complex sales will require more diagnosis, but these two questions still tell you about the health of any opportunity.)

3. Strategize six recurring selling challenges

It’s not enough to diagnose an opportunity. Diagnosis sets us up for tackling solutions, but for the specific actions we need to move deals towards the close, we need to strategize. Each selling situation is unique in terms of its detail, but the same sales strategy themes and challenges recur across salespeople and products. Sales managers can be most effective when they raise awareness of fundamental obstacles that block the closing of deals. Thereafter, they leave the way open for more detailed strategizing and coming up with innovative ways to increase buyer buy-in.

There are essentially six recurring issues that affect sales opportunities and that require strategizing to a greater or lesser extent. These are:

1. Figuring out the roles, influence and power of the people involved. Call them stakeholder issues.
2. Figuring out status quo issues that stop people changing to your solution.  These include the incumbent competitor, the fear and risk associated with change, and the vested interests of managers, users and third parties.
3. Figuring out timing and priority issues for prospects. Many prospects will like what you offer, but there may be twenty more priorities ahead of you. That’s why opportunities that are based on a “stated problem” are usually further up the priority list.
4. Figuring out reactions to money and access to funding for your project.
5. Figuring out the most creative, innovative solution, and how to position that solution, so that people want to prioritize your product, service or project.
6. Minimizing the disruption associated with changing, and making implementation easy. Increasingly, buyers want vendors to make implementation painless.

Note: The more complex the sale, the more in-depth strategizing you will require for each of these issues. You may want to reference work such as The Challenger Sale, to acquire the necessary tools and techniques.

The secret to sales strategizing is knowing where in the sales process an opportunity sits.

However simple or complicated you want to get, there are essentially six stages where an opportunity can sit:

Stage 1: It’s a target opportunity; no selling move has been made yet

Stage 2: First scheduled engagement – and the start of buyer participation

Stage 3: Prospects willing to explore working with you

Stage 4: Prospects who are due to decide

Stage 5: Prospects who are about to buy

Stage 6: Closed prospects – customers moving into account management

It’s obvious that selling strategy emphases will vary across the stages. At stage 2, we still need to identify stakeholders for example, while stage 3 will be about figuring out who can make things happen, while, at stage 5, the emphasis will be on micro-managing the tasks that lead to a signed order.

4. Create a performance climate that encourages self-correcting

Most managers operate within a culture of long-established beliefs and traditions that rule over everyday life and dictate reactions. Few managers can do much about the company’s culture.  Managers can, however, create a climate in the sales group that drives better sales behaviors. They do this by sending out signals about what is important, what are the priorities, supplying the best tools and supporting rather than directing. 

Ultimately, serious salespeople don’t need or like to be directed; they like to be supported in a climate where the “rules” are obvious, accepted and promoted. And the best occasion available to the manager to promote an effective climate is the weekly internal sales meeting, whether in a group setting or at an individual sales person level.

Many organizations strive to codify accumulated experience across the sales group. If a manager wants to create a climate where people start to self-correct, less will prove better than more. Less means:

• A clear structure for the sales meeting that means any sales person can bring the meeting to the meeting.
• Recurring questions that address forecast and individual opportunity issues.
• Generating sales strategies that can be applied across all sales people and selling situations; individual selling situations differ, but the same selling challenges and themes recur.

How are you creating a self-correcting environment for your salespeople? Add your thoughts in the comments below.

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