Sales Leaders – 3 Things World-Class Sales Organizations Do Differently

By: Kristin Anderson, Sales Assessment SME, Baker Communications

Now that we have some of the hurdles out of the way, let’s talk about three things world-class sales organizations do differently.

#1: World-Class Sales Organizations Have a Strong Sales Culture & Recruiting System in Place to Continually Upgrade the Salesforce

Picture this, it’s the last week of the quarter and as you walk through the bullpen and take stock of what’s happening on the sales floor, the excitement is so contagious that you can feel the energy in the air. Everyone is feeding of each other’s productivity and positivity. There are high-fives and fist-bumps and the motivation is so LOUD that you can hear it! A world-class sales organization has a palpable desire and passion for success in sales. This organization is committed to doing whatever it takes (within moral and ethical boundaries, of course) to be successful in sales. It is open to coaching and thirsty for success. Its grit and motivation are contagious. Drive and momentum propel it forward. A world-class sales organization is continually working to raise the bar on its current level of success. A sales culture of this magnitude does not happen by accident. Here are three ways to build your own:

1. Strong Sales Culture by Design – Identify and Upskill Your “B” Players: First, identify your “A”, “B” and “C” players. Move out your “C” players – your weakest salespeople. A world-class sales organization has no room for mediocrity. You can move these “C” players to another position in the company or perhaps put them on a Performance Improvement Plan, but they must be removed from your sales team. Your “A” players are already in good shape, let them keep doing what they do best. You will have the most to gain by identifying and upskilling your “B” players and turning them into “A” players. Do this with targeted coaching and training.

In a world-class sales organization, 100% of your salespeople need to be top performers.

Why do you want only “A” players? Because they overachieve and crash through quotas. They have the mindset, the “Sales DNA,” and the commitment and motivation to do whatever it takes to be successful. Wondering who your “A” players are? Click here to reach out and we will send you information on our Sales Force Evaluation.

2. No Excuses Allowed:You may not believe you have a culture of excuse-making, but if your salespeople regularly make excuses as to why they didn’t get a deal they forecasted, or if they rationalize why they lost a deal to a competitor or why they weren’t able to reach a decision maker, then you do in fact have a culture of excuse-making. They may be telling you facts, but it doesn’t matter – they are still excuses. In the end, these salespeople weren’t good enough or effective enough to get the deal. The only way to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself is to demand that these salespeople own these broken or unsuccessful deals by taking full responsibility, learning, and understanding what went wrong, and not making the same mistakes again!
3. Recruit and Retain Only “A” Players: World-class sales organizations have mastered sales selection and are able to consistently identify, hire, onboard and retain only top performers.

Of the nearly two million salespeople assessed by Objective Management Group, 74% are considered average-to-weak in sales capability. That means that only 26% of your applicants will have what it takes to be “A” players. Find and hire that 26 %!

Every candidate you hire must have better sales skills than your current group of top performers so that you are continually upgrading your sales organization.  This requires you to use a world-class, sales-specific recruiting tool, such as our Confidential Sales Candidate Hiring Assessment. Objective Management Group research shows that 77% of the time, sales managers hire the wrong person for the job. Using an effective sales hiring candidate assessment is a must.

91% of salespeople recommended via this tool are reported as strong, productive members of their sales teams one year after employment.

Conversely, 75% of the ultimately-hired sales candidates NOT recommended by the tool were gone within six months. There is a reason this tool has been ranked #1 in the world for eight consecutive years – it effectively predicts sales success!

#2: World-Class Sales Organizations Have Sales Managers Who Coach Consistently, Effectively and A LOT

According to Objective Management Group, coaching by the sales manager has the single biggest impact on sales growth. The science shows us that sales managers who devote at least 50% of their time to coaching have salespeople who have a sales effectiveness score 28% higher than those managers who devote little-to-no time coaching. They say it starts from the top, and it’s true – effective coaching can:

• Help sales managers impact the growth of their salespeople,
• Improve the sufficiency and accuracy of the pipelines of salespeople within the organization,
• Increase margins, and
• Shorten sales cycles

Another outcome of effective coaching is that it enables sales managers to build a bench of talent to eventually replace themselves. Consider conducting a salesforce evaluation with a Sales Effectiveness & Improvement Analysis to find out if your sales managers are good coaches. A few things to think about as it relates to coaching:

1. Who to Coach: Your biggest gain is to identify and coach your “B” players. Your “A” players are already doing great and don’t stand to improve as much as your “B” players.
2. What to Coach: Sales managers will have the most impact on their sales teams by coaching to the individual needs of each salesperson and by looking at patterns. When you look for and coach to patterns, you can fix root causes. To have the most impact, your coaching conversations should target the hidden weaknesses that may not be obvious to your representatives, but the presence of such weaknesses is impacting their sales success. For example, if a salesperson is not meeting his or her numbers because of low prospecting activity, the underlying cause may be a high “need for approval” from their prospects, which makes it harder for your salesperson to pick up the phone and call a prospect out of the blue because he or she doesn’t want to annoy or interrupt the prospect. Once this is uncovered as the real reason why prospecting isn’t happening, then coaching should involve eliminating your salesperson’s need for approval, not telling him or her to pick up the phone more.
3. Don’t assume Your Managers Know “How” to Coach: You must train your leaders on how to be good coaches, you must teach them what good looks like, what should be happening in coaching conversations, how often, and how you know it is working. You may think that your managers are good sales coaches, but the reality is that if they don’t have the Sales Management DNA or possess the competency to effectively coach their salespeople, they are likely not approaching coaching correctly. What if they are coaching on the wrong behaviors? Perhaps they don’t know what they don’t know.

#3: World-Class Sales Organizations Have a Milestone-Centric Sales Process Tied to CRM With a Customer-Focused Approach

To be world-class, you must develop a formal, milestone-centric sales process that is repeatable and scalable. The sales process in its most basic form is a representation of a company’s sales process. It provides a framework and serves as a guideline so that everyone in the organization is operating from the same playbook. If an opportunity is in a qualification stage, then everyone from the CEO to the sales manager knows what that means and what needs to happen for the deal to advance.

When there is not a formal sales process, forecasts are inaccurate, sales cycles are longer and win rates decrease. 

Companies with a formal sales process have an 18% increase in revenue growth over companies that do not have one.  Within the framework of your sales process, your sales methodology or customer approach should be consultative and customer-focused. The consultative approach allows you to differentiate yourself from the competition and uncover the compelling reasons why the prospect will buy from you versus your competition. It will also give you enough data to get the right material into your proposal, allowing you to sell on value instead of price.

Where to Begin

If you are looking to build a world-class sales organization or are looking to finally fix the problems that are preventing you from building a world-class sales organization, reach out to Baker Communications and let the experts conduct a Sales Effectiveness & Improvement Analysis. This is an incredibly important step and the best investment you will make in developing your sales team. It gives you the answers you don’t currently have and outlines a roadmap on how to achieve your next level of success. When you conduct a Sales Effectiveness & Improvement Analysis, you will receive dozens of insights to help you develop the maturity of your sales organization, from telling you if you have the right people in the right roles, to identifying your “B” players. This analysis will quickly become the most important collection of information about your salesforce.

As one client so aptly declared, Baker’s Sales Assessment is like “Moneyball” for sales!

About Baker Communications

As one of America’s fastest-growing corporate training companies, Baker Communications has helped millions of professionals reach maximum performance for over 35 years. Globally recognized companies and government agencies, including AWS, VMWare, ExxonMobil, General Electric, SAP and Bank of America depend on Baker Communications to equip their employees with skills to increase market share and produce immediate results. Baker provides customized targeted practice-driven performance improvement solutions that produce rapid, measurable results. Baker Communications’ solutions have been utilized and delivered worldwide, throughout Europe, South America, North America, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific.