Driving actions not outcomes: Importance of promoting the right sales employee behaviours

Following on from my blog post “Driving actions not outcomes: Are your employees doing the right behaviours to build better performance and career development?”

By the way, how are you doing this week against the challenges I set at the end of that content piece?

In this blog are the thoughts, ideas and insights of what behaviours, activities and actions you could be driving to develop your sales employees and increase your business performance.

These suggestions and examples are from:

• Sparta customers
• How Sparta ourselves have tested and used different types of behaviours and activities for our own business
• Feedback and insights from meeting with several sales leaders over the past two months discussing this very subject
• My own experience having managed various sales organisations over the years.

Before we move onto what these behaviours could be, let's start with why is it important to be focussing on your sales employees behaviours?

Typically sales teams are made up of your low performers, middle performers and your top performers. The low performers normally are about 10% of your team, the middle performers 70% and your top performers 20%. We have all been guilty of it (myself included), that we tend to spend a lot of time trying to turn around the ‘low performers’ and trying to squeeze out as much as we can out of the ‘top performers’. A common mistake in my opinion. You need to be putting your energies and focus on those ‘middle’ performers, that is where the goldmine is.

Here is an interesting blog I read the other day by Chris Murray, MD of Varda Kreuz Training, that touches on this subject.

We have all as sales leaders been very focussed on setting objectives and KPI’s around ‘outcomes’, such as revenues, meetings booked, meetings attended and opportunities created. Of course these are all very important KPI’s, but we don’t consistently focus and set objectives on what behaviours need to be done to even reach those  milestones.

Take for example your best performer, she or he are probably consistently doing good behaviours and practices to be able to reach those KPI’s, such as attending networking events, reading up on the industry, asking the right questions on calls or in meetings etc..while your middle and low performers are not. Sounds obvious doesn't it? But it's clear we are not setting the right behaviour objectives often enough to all our sales employees to be doing these behaviours. If we did, we see more middle performers moving into that top performers bracket.

By getting consistent at setting, monitoring and giving frequent feedback to your sales employees regarding these all important behaviour and activity goals, you will see a notable difference in their performance and the business growth as a whole. Imagine by focussing more time on those middle performers and these behaviours you manage to move them up into that top performer bracket? Your overall performance as a business would increase significantly.

Motivation and Development

Another area to think about is motivation and reward by carrying out these behaviours. Quite often companies only reward and praise the top performers through commissions, announcing great deals they have done or by running internal competitions that are heavily weighted on traditional KPI’s, not the behaviours that enables them to reach those KPI’s.

The ‘middle’ performers can become quite demotivated by never receiving praise, reaching revenue targets, winning any internal competitions and may feel they are not making any progress. Focus on the behaviours, and those middle performers will gain more recognition for achieving those behavioural goals. They will instantly feel more engaged, recognised, rewarded and of course it will improve their overall performance.

Here is a blog by Sparta’s CEO and Founder James Pember talking about this very subject.

The Behaviours

Credibility

It's important your sales team are credible, thought leaders, experts in the field and someone a potential new customer can trust. How about these behaviours and best practices that you could instil into your staff to be doing more of:

• Read a piece of industry relevant content a day and share with colleagues.

• Engage with influencers five times a day on LinkedIn and Twitter

• Sign up to at least two networking events a month

• Inviting a prospect to a company event

• Sending a prospect a piece of company or industry content (Touch points)

• Asking for feedback on the product or service

• Speaking at an event

• Asking what one future development would they like to see in the service or product

• Hosting a webinar or workshop

• Taking a prospect out for a coffee

• Read the prospects latest annual reports and use part of it in a meeting

• Attending a training course outside of work hours

• Invite along a senior member of the company or a product manager to a meeting with you

• Sharing with colleagues how a customer was won and why they use the product and service

• Following the customer on Twitter and get LinkedIn connected to them

Qualifying and closing - maximising revenue opportunities

At Sparta a major global automotive customer of ours has behaviour objectives set that they need to ask “would like to buy extra oil”, “Do you need to change your wiper blades” and “Do you need to change your windshield?”. Simple, but effective way to ensure they are not missing out on any up-sell opportunities.

We at Sparta have behaviours in place for our internal March competition for “ending a meeting with the check” (Needs, authority and agenda) and “Ask what are the top three values they see in using Sparta?”. Our product team certainly appreciate that last question in helping to mould the product into what the market requires.

• Replying to an incoming lead within 10 minutes

• Ask the customer the question “would you like to buy xxxxx”

• Ask for a decision date

• Ask who holds the budget

• Ask who are all the decision makers

• Complete the BANT in a call (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing)
• Speaking to a new department or territory

• Ask what are their top three values they see in using the service

• Ending a call or meeting with “the check” (Needs, authority and agenda)

• Introduction to a new contact within the company

• Mentioning a new product for up-sell/cross sale

• Gaining a referral from the prospect

• Proposal sent

• 10 calls made

• Moving a customer onto a subscription

• Ask if there is any reason why they would not proceed with your service/product

• Booked meeting with a Fortune 500 company

• Booked meeting further than 2 weeks away

• Booked a meeting for next week

• Booked a meeting for this week

• New phone number and contact email address sourced

• Calling a prospect sourced from a current affair

• Winning a client off a competitor

Team collaboration

Some of the behaviours above cross over to this section such as reading industry content which can then be shared with colleagues or sharing new customer wins success stories. However there are plenty of behaviours you could be encouraging and rewarding. Here is a list of a few (A tactical is typically a fast paced power hour or two team calling session):

• Passing a referral to a colleague

• Updating the CRM system with the full customer/prospect profile

• Covering for a colleague when off sick

• Covering for a colleague when on holiday

• Taking part in a Tactical

• Winning a Tactical

• Organising a Tactical

• Standing up for 30 minutes on the phone

• Making tea or coffee for the team

• Assist a colleague in closing a deal

• Giving feedback to colleagues

• Arranging a work social

• Presenting to the team in a workshop

Of course there are many many more types of behaviours and activities you could be driving across your sales teams but hopefully this can serve as a checklist of some behaviours you can implement.

If you want to gather more ideas or fancy a chat to discuss in more depth then do feel free contact me. I’m sure over time more brilliant behavioural ideas will evolve.

Stay tuned for the next content piece by me:

“Driving actions not outcomes: Importance of promoting the right customer services employee behaviours”