Shift Your Sales Performance Curve
PUT YOUR TEAM ON THE "GOLD STANDARD"
DEFINE WHAT MAKES YOUR SALES PEOPLE HIGH-PERFORMERS AND MANAGE TO THAT STANDARD.
Sales leaders understand firsthand the impacts of underperforming sellers and poor sales managers. An ill-equipped sales team, perhaps more than any other business function, can quickly degrade overall organizational performance, underwhelm shareholders, and disenfranchise customers. Salespeople are the external face and voice of the organization. Ineffective or unprepared sellers can seriously blemish the company’s brand image and lead to disappointing top- and bottom-line performance. This can be addressed somewhat by weeding out underperformers, but turnover disrupts customer relationships, leads to missed sales opportunities, and allows competitors to take uncovered territory. Further, without the right criteria for selecting and managing replacements, you may be no better off in the end.
"Pruning low-performing sellers is an incomplete solution."
If this is your reality, you are not alone. According to research by The TAS Group two-thirds of sellers miss quota and more than half of sellers lack the skills they need to be successful. Even among better-performing teams, less than half of individual sellers achieve their targets. This means that either a few stars are carrying the load for underperformers, or front-line sales managers are jumping in as super-sellers to close deals. Obviously, these are not sustainable solutions. If you’re experiencing these pain points, the cost to your organization of failing to act—and failing to act quickly – is lost sales, lost revenues, and irreparable brand damage, paving the way for your competition. Having skilled salespeople all striving for consistently defined high achievement is critical to your success.
STRIVE FOR THE GOLD STANDARD (BUT WHAT IS THE GOLD STANDARD?)
Most sales organizations are not strategic or overt in laying out what constitutes high performance—their “gold standard.”
"When asked to define what makes their best sellers successful, many salesleaders at the same organization point to different skillsets or, worse yet, to skills that are not shown to lead to high-performance."
In these organizations, individual sales managers make hiring decisions largely based on individual bias and personal experience. The criteria for what makes a “great” salesperson may have evolved to reflect qualities of past success within the organization, from the manager’s experiences at another company, or more generic “work ethic” standards that all sales people should have … and many of the low performers do have.
"While a skill or attribute that everyone demonstrates may be important to the role, if it’s something everyone is doing, it does not differentiate high performance."
The criteria being used to make talent decisions may or may not be sound, but it’s more important to ask whether that criteria is aligned to the company’s needs, whether it is consistent, and whether it …
differentiates your top sellers from the average sales person at any organization
is uniquely exhibited by the highest performers
proven to directly contribute to delivering your desired sales results
If you were to randomly ask sales leaders across your organization to describe the attributes of a “great seller,” how likely are you to hear a consistent answer? (We encourage you to conduct this simple test.) In our experience, too many sales leaders get as many different answers as the number of people they ask.
"Without a consistent set of criteria to define what great looks like, it is impossible to effectively and consistently source, hire, onboard, manage, coach, develop, and reward the right talent."
CREATING GOLD STANDARDS FOR SALES - QUICK GAME PLAN
The introduction of gold standards provides a common set of criteria and guidelines to enable an organization to consistently raise the bar, coach and develop talent and hold salespeople accountable for the highest standards of performance. Consistent standards shift the design criteria of people management practices from minimum job requirements to the attributes needed to excel. To create gold standards for your sales talent, start by understanding what your top sellers and sales leaders are doing differently than average or under-performers. Explore how they spend their time, how they prepare for sales calls, the mindsets they have when they interact with customers, and how they leverage tools, technology and other resources to be successful.
Subscribe below to download a more complete list of questions to create your gold standards:
SAMPLE GOLD STANDARD: SEASONED JUDGMENT
Demonstrates understanding of markets, competitors and customer needs; translates company’s points of differentiation into meaningful insights and value for the customer.
Balances trade-offs between sales, growth, profit, and customer satisfaction to sell the right products at the right price.
Uses sound judgment to prioritize time against the most important customers and most promising sales opportunities; stays focused on the vital few priorities that lead to superior sales results.
Your final draft should be reviewed with top performing sellers and leaders to confirm that raising your talent to these standards will indeed lead to significantly higher performance across the organization.
ENSURE ALL YOUR SALES LEADERS UNDERSTAND AND APPLY THE GOLD STANDARDS. AND THAT ALL YOUR SALESPEOPLE MEASURE UP.
Just as you measure all potential applicants against your core values, (You do that… right?) you should evaluate all sales applicants and even current team members against your gold standards using consistent assessment tools and practices. A simple a ‘thumbs up/thumbs down’ approach or “he seems like a good guy” will not lead to a world-class selling organization.
"Gold standards for sales leader positions should be used as the litmus test for any talent-related decisions."
BRINGING YOUR GOLD STANDARDS TO LIFE.
In summary, Gold Standards are a set of actionable and observable attributes that are derived by studying your best sales talent to identify what sets them apart from all others.
Once defined, gold standards provide a blueprint that directs all talent-related practices—sourcing and recruiting, onboarding, coaching, developing, managing, and rewarding performance. Use your new insights to design interview guides, training programs, development guides and coaching tools to transfer this knowledge across your organization. In other words, Learn from the best, and teach it to the rest!
Building a sales team without gold standards is like building a house without a blueprint.
By definition, gold standards should be aspirational as they describe exceptional performance. We are after all looking to raise the bar. If a seller or sales leader reads the gold standards and says, “I am strong in all of these,” it could mean:
a) The standards are not clear and actionable
b) The standards do not adequately represent the highest standards of performance
c) The individual needs coaching on self-awareness and professional humility
d) You have a truly exceptional person – do everything you can to retain him / her
Once your standards are identified and communicated, you can begin developing your talent with a simple application. Ask each seller or leader to review the standards to choose one or two areas of relative strength and one or two opportunities for improvement. Next, they should review the selected development areas with their direct manager, identify actions to improve and commit to follow up at a future date. If created well, becoming more effective at any of the standards—even if it’s a current strength—should yield positive performance results.