Crafting Your Sales Coaching Plan

Successful business owners craft a sales coaching plan.

Creating a sales driven business culture starts with you getting committed to sales coaching first..

I have never met a successful business owner who wasn’t a fantastic sales person.  Did they get there because of a long-term sales coaching plan or are they just naturally good at it?

In the weeks ahead I will address in more detail my prior post regarding the sales process.  Today I want to help you think about your sales accountability and how this is spelled out in your sales coaching plan and overall mindset.  After all, if you are like me, you own your business.  You’re the boss.  The big cheese.  Everyone else is accountable to you.  Right?  So who’s holding me and you accountable for sales activities?  Do you have anything like a sales coaching plan in place now?  And how’s that working out so far this year?  Are you on track to meet this year’s sales and business goals or are you behind the curve?

While we work with clients on their websites, email marketing and other aspects of lead generation, I spend a lot of time addressing sales issues when conducting sales coaching sessions.  In addition to marketing, I love to address the fundamental activities that every sales person and business owner must achieve.  Yes, business owners must sell in some form.  Show me a business owner who won’t make sales calls and I’ll show you a business doomed for failure.

Even as a seasoned sales professional and business owner, I am accountable to my coach, my team and my daily sales coaching plan for sales activities.  All three matter when it comes to disciplined sales coaching and accountabilities.  A lot.  Because if my sales coaching and vision isn’t what it needs to be, it usually can be tracked to lack of accountability.  Worse yet, and we see this often, business owners and professionals see no need for sales coaching because they don’t see themselves needing to be professional with their own sales approach.  Without specific accountability I won’t be as focused and disciplined each and every day as I need to be when it comes to make sales calls.  No one can be as effective as they can be without accountability and coaching.  So if you don’t have a system, a coach or a team for your own accountability then at least get a coach.  Develop a system. And over time you can build a much more effective sales organization.

When it comes to successful selling it’s all about the numbers.  I also refer to this as the essential selling activities.  Calls, meetings, proposals (yuck) and agreements.  I define a sale as any transaction that brings a prospective or existing client closer to conducting new business with me.  No sales professional or business owner can leverage each conversation or business meeting into a specific sale at that moment.  But we can build new relationships through a conversation.  We can get referrals.  We can identify challenges our customers might have to which we can deliver a specific solution later.  We can schedule appointments.  My point is there are lots of ways to make a sale.  And activities is how we best impact sales results.

Here’s an accountability formula I like to follow each day.  Perhaps it will help you.

1.  How many attempts to have a sales conversation must you have today, over the phone or in person?  Set a goal for yourself to pick up the phone and dial a certain number of people with whom you will have a sales conversation.  We must talk with and meet people to affect new business.  When calling people on the phone you won’t get through to everyone.   Not everyone with whom you schedule an appointment will make the meeting.  But we must focus on specific numbers to impact the desired outcome we want for new business.  Budget enough time each day to make the calls and do the meetings.

2.  How many people must you talk with today, over the phone or in person?  Once you get in contact with someone you’re in the game.  Business is about creating and managing relationships.  Successful sales people and business owners who embrace their own selling accountability increase sales by talking with existing or prospective customers and affecting a positive outcome.  The definition of a sale is any agreement that gets you closer to new business.  Sales is a process.  Your process is unique to you and your business.

3.  How many agreements must you generate today?  I exchange the word agreement for proposal.  I hate proposals.  I think they are one of the biggest stalls or put offs we get from customers.  So I like to define proposals instead as agreements.  If someone asks me for a proposal I’ll suggest we discuss what that would look like.  I then suggest we create the proposal together.  And if I do this well the proposal becomes an agreement that the customer can review and sign off on.  I, like you, need to generate a certain number of agreements each day in order to get some percentage of them to become a reality.  Meaning I get paid for providing a service of value.

4. How many agreements get agreement today?  Not all proposals or agreements, depending on your business, will become a reality.  Some people will hire you or buy your product or service and some won’t.  I have never met anyone who has a 100% close rate.  At WealthNet Partners we strive to have about 60% of our agreements signed off on.  That’s a successful conversion number for us.  This may not be the same for you.  The point is, if you’re conversion numbers are too high maybe you’re not charging enough.

5.  What does this mean to you in terms of new business or personal income?  This is the pay off for the hard work involved.  It’s amazing how so many business owners and sales professionals can find a million things to do each day instead of making sales calls.  Yet, if you set the intention to be accountable for and measure your daily sales activities, over time you will increase sales and you will make more money.  There’s got to be an outcome consistent with your goals to make all the work worth while.  So put a number on this aspect of the process so you are motivated to make the calls and do the necessary sales activities.

When it comes to generating new business, there’s “pay time” and “no pay time.”  Pay time is about doing the activities that result in new business.  No pay time is about all the other stuff we need to do in a given day that may not impact sales.

As business owners, many of us might be relying on technology too much instead of on the important activity of actually talking with customers and prospective customers.   This is a classic mistake.  No matter how many emails you send, how many contacts you have within your social network, or how many unique visits you get on your website you still have to focus on the basics of selling.  This is true for you and your entire sales organization if you’re in a typical business and sales process.

Whether you have a sales coach or someone on your team to whom you are accountable, set specific activity goals for every day of the week.  Block time for making calls.  Record your actual numbers.  Some software applications do this well.  But you can also keep a log on your daily calendar or a note pad.  Make it a priority to do this consistently for 90 days and see what happens to your sales numbers.

We welcome your comments, thoughts and suggestions.