Jeffrey Gitomer

The biggest thing sales leaders overlook: SALES!

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Letter from a fan:

Dear Jeffrey, I’m a big fan of your weekly column, especially the one about making sales vs. measuring sales activity. Brilliant! It describes my situation to a tee. I’m an outside salesman who spends countless hours filling in itineraries, CRM notes, and reports. I had the biggest ever increase in sales last year by far, yet I have been told at times I didn’t make enough calls that week. Very frustrating. Thanks for any advice you can give me.

My first piece of advice is: Get your boss fired as soon as possible. Get a real boss, leader, coach and helper, and your sales will double.

You seem to be doing the right thing – INCREASING SALES, and having the best year of your career. What else could a manager want? Sounds like it’s your manager that needs to make more calls and increase his activity.

Let me address sales leaders…

REALITY QUESTION FOR SALES MANAGERS: Why would you, as a leader, take an improving salesperson who is having the best year of their career, and tell him or her they’re “not making enough calls”? Why not do something to actually help?
REALITY ANSWERS: (Pick any or all that apply.) You’re an idiot who knows nothing about leadership, coaching, or creating winners. You’re a micro manager with little or no current sales talent yourself. (You may have sold before, but that was before the internet – and you’ve probably never tweeted). You’re an unschooled leader, following the old way rather than learning what’s new. You’re using CRM as an accountability tool, rather than a sales tool. You’re totally clueless about your customer base and what will grow more and profitable sales. OUCH!

Successful sales leaders…

  • Manage the sales cycle, not call activity.
  • Measure the sales cycle, not sales activity.
  • Help make follow-up calls with their salespeople to learn more about the sales cycle.
  • Study the last ten sales to help understand what will make the 11th.
  • Discover their most profitable customers – and then go on to uncover WHY they’re the most profitable.
  • Find where the profit comes from in every sale.
  • Discover their most loyal customer – and WHY they stay loyal.
  • Make a few sales calls together with their people.
  • Teach salespeople to ask better questions that emotionally engage.

REALITY: Maybe by spending more VALUE time with each existing customer it will increase their wallet share and your market share, and referrals will go UP.
REALITY: Maybe making too many calls is actually hampering growth. Someone measuring activity and numbers would never know that. Pity.

‘Measuring activity’ gives you a false read on the reality of sales. And as a leader, a manager, a coach, a teacher, you have a far greater responsibility to help increase sales than to just bellow out ‘more calls’ as your cure-all answer.

And maybe more calls IS the answer, but until you uncover the other ninety nine possibilities, you have no right to destroy or discourage your best salespeople from becoming better.

Or worse, they quit because they’re sick of you and your style.

Sales management and sales leadership is one of the hardest jobs in the world. First you have to know each of your people, why they’re working, why they’re working for you, and what will make them better. Second you have to know your customers, why your customers buy (beyond price), andwhat keeps them loyal. Third you have to be a better salesperson than they are. And fourth, you have to be a great teacher – able to convey your knowledge in a way that others WANT To hear you.

You know these things so that when your salespeople come to you with issues, you can actually help them make the sale – not make more calls.

Make more cold calls? Huh? In 2013? Really?

  • If you’re looking to become a hated sales leader, with lots of turnover, make your people make lots of cold calls.
  • If you’re wanting to drive your best people to the competition, make your people make lots of cold calls.
  • And if you’re looking to have low morale and poor performance on your team, make your people make lots of cold calls.

NOTE WELL:

  • The new cold call is a social media connection. Start with LinkedIn.
  • The better cold call is an expanded relationship with an existing customer.
  • The best cold call is a referral. One that you earn, not ask for.

BIG REALITY: The object of sales leadership is to IMPROVE INDIVIDUAL SALES, not improve “team” sales.
BIGGER REALITY: Your encouragement and enthusiasm – to them, and with them – will help build both their confidence AND their sales.
BIGGEST REALITY: Managers somehow believe their salespeople want to be on their team and win for the team and the company. To hit some big goal arbitrarily set by management. Nothing could be further from the truth. Salespeople wanna win for themselves and their families – and they wanna win for their customers. Not for you, your other employees, or the company.

Get a grip on ‘why’ salespeople want to win. Give them real-world help. Coach them, and it will have a major impact on their sales, and your leadership success.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at salesman@gitomer.com.

Recommended Resources – Winning Strategies for Power Presentations

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StrategyDriven Recommended ResourcesWinning Strategies for Power Presentations
by Jerry Weissman

About the Book

Winning Strategies for Power Presentations by Jerry Weissman is a vast collection of presentation best practices focused on gaining and retaining the audience’s attention and effectively conveying the message desired. Jerry takes his presentation lessons from history’s many great orators and presenters. These collections are grouped by topical area including:

  • The Art of Telling Your Story – 30 best practices
  • Graphics: How to Design PowerPoint Slides Effectively – 15 best practices
  • Delivery Skills: Actions Speak Louder Than Words – 12 best practices
  • How to Handle Tough Questions – 8 best practices
  • Special Presentations – 10 best practices

Benefits of Reading this Book

All professionals at every organizational level must effectively communicate in order to be successful for it is only through a well conveyed, received, and understood message that we influence others and shape the behaviors around us.

StrategyDriven Contributors like Winning Strategies for Power Presentations because for its thoroughness in addressing each aspect of public presentations. Jerry’s book is well researched and truly gathers the best presentation practices from renowned influencers throughout history. Within his book, we found numerous gems of wisdom, particularly regarding the language and syntax used by successful presenters, that will help us to take our presentation skills to the next level.

We had two criticisms of Jerry’s book. First, while the best practices are contained within well-structured collections there is no overarching process for ‘pulling it all together,’ to create and deliver a powerful presentation. Second, we would have liked to see more and more detailed illustrations of the points Jerry made in the Graphics section of the book; providing a visual example for the points being made.

Winning Strategies for Power Presentations provides readers with a thorough body of best practices needed to elevate their presentation development and delivery skills. Each recommendation is clear and concisely conveyed enabling the reader to quickly select and extract the specific insight needed. For its deep insight and actionable conveyance of how readers can improve a vital business skill, Winning Strategies for Power Presentations is a StrategyDriven recommended read.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article

It’s All Integrated

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures ArticleData, data everywhere…

Almost everything done in the modern business world involves some sort of data transaction and/or creation. Transactions performed in one computer application often contribute to or initiate the generation of additional data in another system. It is from these interrelated data sets that performance metrics are derived. Consequently, the actions taken by an individual using one system can knowingly and unknowingly drive the behaviors of numerous others and influence performance measurement output.[wcm_restrict plans=”41518, 25542, 25653″]

The power of integrated, enterprise-wide software applications is their ability to transact much of the organization’s data and provide near real-time metrics and reports in support of strategic and operational decision-making. Without appropriate recognition and deliberate configuration of these systems to provide this information output, the value of these costly applications is greatly diminished.

StrategyDriven studies show that only 40 percent of metrics and reports can be readily automated without deliberate action to identify data sources and automate data collection during initial application configuration. Far greater automation can be achieved through disciplined development of underlying processes that drive metrics and reports data gathering (see Figure 1) and deployment of integrated data collection and recording mechanisms such as enterprise resource planning systems, data warehouses, forms, and handheld devices.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Integration Article
Figure 1: Integrated Process Flow with Data Collection Points Supporting Metrics and Reports Development

Click here to view a larger illustration.

New Software Application Configuration and Implementation

Modern organizations are highly integrated structures supported by a complex array of software applications. Performance indicators measuring performance across process segments may therefore draw information from several supporting applications or modules of a single application. The integration of these systems significantly contributes to the ability to draw out the data necessary to create meaningful and informative metrics and reports. Thus, when designing any system, it is important to begin with the end in mind; including the metrics and reports needed to support effective and efficient process execution and decision-making.

  • Underlying process design considers needed metrics and reports and includes automated and system driven manual data gathering
  • Device and application integration ensures needed metrics and reports data is adequately transferred between systems
  • Specific applications and data fields containing the organization’s master data (the data of record for legal purposes) are identified and preferentially used for metrics and reports generation

Warning Flag – Many enterprise resource planning system implementations omit the installation of metrics and reporting applications because of time and/or budget constraints. Such decisions significantly diminish the value of these costly systems, as their primary benefit is the provision of near real-time information in support of more efficient process execution and effective decision-making.

Implementing Metrics Using Existing Applications and Devices

While performance to be measured should be determined irrespective of the immediate availability of contributing data (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Identify the Measures First), it remains desirable to automate the generation of as many metrics and reports as possible so to limit the administrative burden of maintaining these documents. In some instances, the necessary data to generate a metric or report is not electronically collected. In those circumstances, an evaluation should be made as to the point of origin at which knowledge of the data occurs and then devise a method to incorporate the gathering of that data within the application supporting those transactions (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Get Data Directly from the Source) or a specially developed data collection application.

Data Collection Principles

  • Collect electronically, preferably in an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or data warehouse so the date can be made broadly available to organization members
  • Electronic data collection applications should be configured to check the data being entered so to minimize the number of data entry errors
  • Data should be gathered as close to the generation source as possible (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Get Data Directly from the Source)
  • Data should be captured as closely in time to its creation as possible. Such timeliness of data gathering is enhanced through automated data collection and the use of handheld devices when manual data entry is required

Underlying processes flowcharts and implementing procedures should be updated to reflect the new data to be collected. Additionally, metrics and reports should contain documentation identifying the specific action drivers influencing the performance output (see StrategyDriven article, Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Documenting Performance Measure Drivers).[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”41518, 25542, 25653″]

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Recommended Resources – I Have A Strategy, No You Don’t

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StrategyDriven Recommended ResourcesI Have a Strategy, No You Don’t: The Illustrated Guide to Strategy
by Howell J Malham Jr

About the Book

I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t: The Illustrated Guide to Strategy by Howell J Malham Jr provides an illustrated definition of business strategy. Howell breaks down the concept of strategy into its component parts and illustrates these with real-world examples from renowned companies.

Unlike other business books, I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t is structured as a playfully interactive dialog between two characters, Larry and Gary. Through these characters’ conversations, Howell shares:

  • Common misconceptions about strategy
  • Four basic elements of strategy
  • Detailed models of effective strategies and why they work

Benefits of Reading this Book

Business leaders at all organizational levels commonly misuse the term ‘strategy.’ This misuse frequently results in miscommunications that ultimately lead to errant decisions and actions detrimental to the organization.

StrategyDriven Contributors like I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t because it brings to light the seldom recognized but often damaging problem of leadership’s misunderstanding of what business strategy is and provides a clear definition to help resolve the issue. While StrategyDriven Contributors don’t fully agree with Howell’s definition of strategy – we believe strategy represents a how not a what – we fully agree with the premise that an organization should define for itself what strategy is and then consistently apply that definition in its planning and execution efforts.

I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t is a quick and easy read. Howell’s examples of effective strategies come from well-known and respected companies making them relatable to the reader. For bringing to light and offering a solution to an age-old business planning and execution problem, I Have a Strategy, No You Don’t is a StrategyDriven recommended read.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Whitepaper

Achieving Organizational Alignment within Healthcare Organizations

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StrategyDriven Organizational Alignment WhitepaperCo-authors Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal and Scot Park, Artower Principal, released a new white paper on organizational alignment and performance improvement for the healthcare industry. The paper describes how best practices in measuring organizational performance in the nuclear power industry can be applied to healthcare providers facing the daunting challenge of concurrently increasing production, efficiency, and quality – all while reducing operating costs. The Value-Based Performance Improvement Model© is an affordable approach that healthcare providers can use to develop a Lean Six Sigma style performance measurement system.

StrategyDriven recently formalized an alliance with Artower Advisory Services to deliver Value-Based Performance Improvement services to healthcare providers and are looking forward to helping these organizations realize the critically important economic benefits created through the use of this new performance improvement model.

Download a copy of Aligning Healthcare Organizations: Lessons in improved Quality and Efficiency from the Nuclear Power Industry by clicking here.

About the Authors

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal, and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Scot Park is a Principal and co-founder of Artower Advisory Services. He has spent the past two decades serving the Healthcare Industry with a focused on Aging Services, Senior Housing and Post-Acute/Long-Term Care. Scot holds a BA in Economics with concentrated studies in Public Administration from John Carroll University. To read Scot’s complete biography, click here.