Guide to Sales Force Development

Building, Growing and Developing a Sales Force of over-achievers is a mystery to most, even those who have been overseeing sales organizations for years. In this guide, I'll show you the cornerstones for doing just that; finding the right people and developing them so that they overachieve.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Read These Great Articles

These articles identify the areas in which to focus if you truly want your salespeople to overachieve.

I recommend: 10 Factors for Getting Your Salespeople to Overachieve
Top 10 Differences Between Sales Winners and Losers
Sales Statistics That Reveal Sales Effectiveness
Fact Based Reasons Why New Salespeople Fail

Then Evaluate Your Existing Sales Force

You can't improve on what you have until you know more about what you have. Is your management team on the same page with regard to your strategies? Can your existing salespeople execute those strategies? What are reasonable expectations for your existing salespeople? Are you hiring the right people? What impact has sales management had on their performance? What is the quality of your sales pipeline? Which of your existing salespeople could perform more effectively? How much more effectively could that be? What kind of support will be required to get them there? What you should do with the salespeople who don't have the ability to improve? Do your existing systems and processes provide the management team and your salespeople with the info they require to succeed? What is the quality of your pipeline? What is the Gap between where you are today and having an over achieving sales force? Get answers to all of these questions and more when you evaluate your sales force.

I recommend: Objective Management Group, Inc., a company I founded, is the industry leader in evaluating the sales force.  They have a unique ability to provide relevent, comprehensive, timely, intelligence so that you can make appropriate decisions about your sales force.

Fast Track Your Existing Management Team

Although you'll have to fix the issues identified in your sales force evaluation, the first thing on the list must be sales management effectiveness. They'll need to support your salespeople in the areas of coaching, motivating, recruiting, developing and accountability. Sales managers must master these five best practices in order to effectively support a development initiative. Further more, managers who can't hold their salespeople accountable won't get their people to change their behaviors, beliefs, or results.

I recommend: Understanding the Sales Force - this top-rated business Blog goes deep in providing a better understanding of these topics. It features comments by sales development experts who share their knowledge and understanding of what it takes to build an effective sales force.

Build a World Class Sales Recruiting Process

Recruiting mistakes like seat of the pants hiring, recruiting to fill a vacancy, superficial interviewing , and otherwise duplicating the methods that have yielded inconsistent results are not the answer. You'll need to reengineer your process for recruiting salespeople. Identify the flaws, determine what successful people must be able to do, write an ad that describes the experiences those people should have, post the ad on job sites like Monster, Career Builder, and Sales Ladder and manage those postings by learning to use these sites in the most effective manner. Use automation to respond to resumes and use an effective, sales specific assessment to identify those who will succeed in a sales position at your company. Qualify hirable candiates by phone to make sure they possess the experience you require, and interview those who earn the highest scores from the phone interview. Run a challenging first interview and selli the opportunity in the final interview.

I recommend:
Monster.com's Job Site
CareerBuilder.com's Job Site
SalesLadder.com's Job Site
Objective Management Group's Express Screen
The Rules Wizard for Automation in Microsoft Outlook

The scene from "Anti-Trust" where Tim Robbins sells the opportunity to a college graduate predisposed to not work for him.

The scene from "Runaway Jury" where Gene Hackman profiles prospective jurors.

The scene from "Boiler Room" where Ben Affleck runs a recruiting class.

Use an Easy to Execute Selling Process

There are countless selling systems and processes to choose from. Some of the most well-known selling systems take very long to learn and are difficult to apply and execute. Choose a process that is both easy for everyone to learn, memorable and easy to apply to your business. If you do that then executing the process will be easy!

I recommend: Baseline Selling - How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Alread Know about the Game of Baseball

Manage the Pipeline

The sales pipeline should be the single most accurate predictor of future sales revenue but, for most companies, the tool is hardly used. Most pipelines are merely spreadsheets listing opportunities with three variables (budget, projected close date and likelihood of closing) that make the pipeline very unreliable. A Visual Pipeline, with defined stages using your critical ratios controls the variables so that the pipeline becomes predictive.

I recommend: My Visual Pipeline - this is it!  The greatest sales management tool since sliced bread.

Install Remaining Systems and Processes

We've covered a recruiting process, the pipeline and the selling process. Next make sure you have a process for qualifying proposals and quotes, tracking sales behavior, reporting critical ratios, and managing relationships.

I recommend: Landslide
SalesTrack with Qualifier

Develop Your Salespeople

Training and coaching, specifically in the areas where your salespeople need the help, two or three times per month for a year or more. Training is a long-term solution, not a source for instant results. Comprehensive training and development takes from 6-12 months to kick in. Add the length of your sales cycle to that timeline and you'll know how long it will take to get your return on the investment. Training and develop is a much more complex process than sharing techniques. It's like a masters program for salespeople. It should involve helping them overcome all of their hidden weaknesses and developing their skills until they overachieve.

I recommend: EvanCarmichael.com - dozens of sales experts
CanDoGo.com
Objective Management Group, Inc. can make a recommendation
EyesOnSales

Take Advantage of Resources on the Internet

What else can you do? Use the links below to find some of the best resources for building your sales force.

I recommend: Understanding the Sales Force - Sales development experts address topics that sales management must be able to tackle in order to build an effective sales force.
The World of Sales and Selling - You'll find links to experts, books, compensation surveys, articles, tools and more.

Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• Building a top performing sales force is hard work but not an impossible task. By following the guidelines above and getting expert help from outside experts, you can build a top performing sales organization too.