“When you have a competency model, you can look at each individual on your team, make sure they get the training that they need, make sure that they get the development that they need and the coaching that they need. This will level out your variability.” – Anthony Iannarino in today’s Tip 1440
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Anthony Iannarino. Hopefully, you already know who Anthony is. He’s a keynote speaker, the author of The Sales Blog, and a whole bunch of great sales books. Here he is:
Anthony Iannarino: I’m the author of a book called Leading Growth, and that book is about the idea of how you consistently create net new risk revenue. But to do that, we have to have a conversation about something that’s really important, that doesn’t get much attention from sales leaders or sales managers. What we don’t pay attention to is the variability of sales performance between individuals.
So the question that I want to start with is how does one salesperson produce outstanding results while another salesperson struggles even to just get a second meeting? And the reason that these things happen is because there is a variability between each of these people. So some people have great skills, other people need help with those skills. So how does the sales force produce an uneven result when every salesperson that works for them works for the same company, they sell the same things, they have the same sales targets, they have the same prospects, they have the exact same managers, and they have the exact same competitors. And some people succeed and other people don’t succeed. And that’s what we need to work on because the variability between the individuals on your team is the variability in your result at the end of the year.
The way to even out the variability is to ensure that you have an effective sales approach, a modern sales approach, and not a legacy approach. So if any part of your first conversation with a client is talking about your company, talking about your clients, talking about your products and services, and then asking them what’s keeping them up at night, you’re practicing a legacy approach. And the legacy approach no longer works. So what you need is everyone on your team to do the right thing in the right way at the right time. So you can do the right thing in the wrong way at the right time and not get the result that you want. And you can do the right thing in the right way at the wrong time, and you still can’t get those results.
What we believe when we hire people is that this salesperson already knows how to sell because their resume showed that they had sales titles in the past and it looks like they have a pedigree. We give them way too much autonomy with too little discipline. Evening out this variability means that you need to train your sales force, you need to develop them, and you especially need to coach individuals and your teams. This means that you have to have a common approach. You have to have role-playing around good language choices, and you need to use your team meetings to increase your team’s sales effectiveness.
The way you want to do this is to get a competency model so you can adjust what you’re doing with your team and you can identify who’s got really strong skills in some of the things that you need to do to be successful and who is lagging and needs more help. When you have a competency model, you can look at each individual on your team, make sure they get the training that they need, make sure that they get the development that they need and the coaching that they need. This will level out your variability. I’m Anthony Iannarino, do good work and we look forward to talking to you soon.
Scott Ingram: For a link to the original video version of this tip, The Sales Blog, and Anthony’s books, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1440. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!