• Why S-L-O-W sales processes are primary cause of missing quota.
• Three steps to change: (a) make a change, (b) create a metric, and (c) be accountable.
• If you’re a sales manager, your first responsibility and highest priority is day-to-day coaching of your salespeople.
• Avoid these 5 common missteps of sales managers.

Why Are You So S-L-O-W?

Why are your sales so slow? I'm notreferring to your order rate. I am talking about the activities and processesthat have to be happening in Zero-Time in order for you to achieve your salesgoals. One thing leads to another and if you are running in place in February,you'll be running to catch up by March and hopelessly behind by June.

Here we are, still near thebeginning of a new year, when hopes for the next twelve months should berunning high. And your selling efforts feel like they are stuck in the thickmud. Just like they were last year. This is not the way to kick off what shouldbe your most successful sales year ever.

Everyone has a reason or an excusefor slow selling. Believe me, we have all been in a situation where youquestion your sales manager about why it is taking so long to move a customeralong in their buying cycle, and they don't have an answer that makes sense. Orany answer at all.

I ask all my new clients toidentify the reason, or reasons, why they are not growing, why their salesefforts are stuck in neutral. The responses I receive are typically all of apiece. As CEOs they can identify the symptoms but not the causes of theproblem. But as CEOs and sales managers of SMBs you can't be a doctor who canonly diagnose the symptoms of the illness without prescribing a cure.

I group the symptoms of saleslethargy into the S-L-O-W acronym.

S is for Status Quo.

Too many companies are justcoasting along. The CEOs are not really satisfied with their results but theyare too worried about making any changes that could rock the boat andpotentially jeopardize the sales they do manage to capture. Maintaining thestatus quo is not a way to thrive.

"StatusQuo is ancient Greek for 'slow death.'"

Folks, say hi to Milt again. (Tolearn more about Milt, check out my book, Zero-Time Selling,or this previous blog post. )

"Hey."

Actually, Milt, Status Quo is notGreek. It is Latin for "the current state of affairs." But when anSMB's sales are stuck, maintaining the status quo is the same as slowly dying.

"AsI said."

L is for Lack of Urgency.

In today's economy you can't expectthe customer to operate on your schedule. The timeframe for every sales actionhas to be immediate. Customers do a lot of online research on your productbefore they ever call you and when they do they are single-mindedly looking foranswers to their questions. The first seller with the complete answers wins.

O is for Outdated sales practices.

Unfortunately, many SMBs stilloperate their sales teams like it is 1912 not 2012. Their only concessions tothe 21st century are a website and email.

"Whatwould you call my pager?"

Google d-i-n-o-s-a-u-r.

Your customer and their buyingbehavior have been irrevocably altered by technology over the past 15-20 years.And if your sales practices and sales methods haven't changed in concert withyour customer then you can't expect to effectively compete for their businessagainst competitors who have evolved.

"GoogleN-E-A-N-D-E-R-T-H-A-L?"

W is for Weak sales management.

I don't like to point fingers.

"Butyou will."

SLOW starts at the top.

Even a highly self-motivated salesperson will find it hard to succeed in company where the status quo rules,where everyone's motor revs at a slower idle and where the sales systems andprocesses were obsolete before the turn of the century. A successful salesculture begins and ends with management. The CEO and sales management have tocommit to change and urgency.

3 Steps To Change

Now, as you move further from the old sales year and deeper into the new sales year, now is the time to evaluate what you can do to shake things up, to change the routines your sales team have followed year after year. Break some of your bad old habits and reach a level of sales success that you haven't achieved before.

Here are THREE tips you can put to use today.  These are not permanent fixes. Or suggestions for how to comprehensively revamp your sales efforts. There are just small ideas you can put to use TODAY that can begin to make a difference and break you out of the SLOW mold. It doesn't matter which one you choose. Just choose one of the following steps and put it into play.

Make One Change Today.

Take a close look at your salesroutines; your sales processes. Tell each of your salespeople to choose justone customer facing activity and change it. Now. Don't just pay lip service tochange. Do something about it. This is not a change that requires a committeeto plan and implement. I'm advocating something much more simple than that.Just choose one aspect of your day-to-day sales activity and change it. Simple.

Create a Metric.

Every aspect of your sales processis measurable. Do you have metrics for each step of your selling process? Areyou measuring how long it takes to respond to your sales leads? Or how long ittakes you to write a quote and deliver it to a prospect or customer? Choose asingle aspect of one sales process and assign a metric to it. Then measure ittoday and again tomorrow.

Be Accountable.

Tell someone about the change you made or the metric you're tracking. Tell a colleague that you have undertaken to make a change in your sales routine. Tell your boss which part of your sales process you have begun to measure and what the goal is. When you tell someone else that you are making a change they will be interested to learn if it is helping you. As a result they will ask you how it is going. And you will need to have an answer for them. Being accountable for change is a big motivator.

If You’re Not Coaching, What Are You Doing?

What's Your #1 Priority?

If you're a sales manager and yournumber one priority each and every day is something other than coaching theindividuals on your sales team to improve their sales productivity then whatare you doing? Whatever it is, put it on hold and take care of your priorities.

The term coaching is in vogue thesedays. Much has been written about the importance of sales managers becomingcoaches for their team. Studies have been cited that claim that it is thesingle most important thing you can do. A commonly cited statistic is that a19% improvement in sales productivity is to be expected with effectivecoaching. To which my response is an old-fashioned "Duh."

The fact is that coaching isnothing more than disciplined sales management. There is no distinction betweenthe two. I attended a conference recently where consultants talked about howthey were hired to coach front line sales reps in companies with sales managersin place. The claim was that sales managers had too many other responsibilitiesand no time to coach their direct reports. I don't buy it.

If you're a CEO, there should onlybe two reasons why a 3rd party consultant should be providing coaching to yourfrontline sales team:

• Your sales managers are inexperienced and don't know how to effectively coach. That is okay. New sales managers need to be trained. They don't arrive in their first sales management assignment fully formed and ready to effectively function as a manager any more than newborn babies are born ready to memorize and recite Shakespeare. But, if this is the case, then train your sales managers. If can't do it yourself, then hire that consultant to coach your manager, but never your sales team. Teach your managers how to be effective sales coaches. And, if they are unable to do that then...

• Your sales managers are in the wrong job. You need to find someone new who is capable of performing the hard work that comes with being an effective sales manager.

What should a sales manager do to be an effective coach?

A. Make certain that each member of your team fully understands the playbook.

In this instance the playbook meansthe sales team is thoroughly trained to know the answers to the"what" and "how" questions. What are they selling and howare they selling it? Sales reps need training in the sales processes you use asmuch as in the products you sell.

B. Work with each member of your the team to develop an individualized sales plan.

The sales plan is simply composedof the objectives, strategies and tactics that the individual sales rep isgoing to employ to achieve their assigned goals. People gravitate towards salesas a career because it gives them a sense of being in control of their owndestiny. But they aren't going to find their destiny without a road map. Theeffective coach makes sure their reps understand what each day, week and monthholds in store.

C.Set expectations not only by your words, but also by your actions.

This is not about achieving thenumber but about the process and what it takes to mold someone into a high-functioning,self-sufficient salesperson. Sales is a craft. Learning how to successfully doit is an apprenticeship. The most successful salespeople I know learned theirtrade by watching their managers at work and integrating the skills andtechniques they observed into their own daily selling routines. An effectivecoach has to be able to demonstrate the skills they are teaching.

D.Get down into the nitty-gritty.

This means conducting regulardetailed reviews of every deal your reps are working, supplying the strategicand tactical coaching to move deals along, as well as providing the wisdom,guidance and counsel a rep needs to motivate them to persevere when the goinggets tough. It means understanding the details of your teams' deal so you canprovide day-to-day guidance to ensure that opportunities are continuing to moveforward.

E.Develop a strong level of trust with your team members.

How does that trust getestablished? By being openly invested in each rep's success to the same degreethat they are. This is a tough standard for sales managers to meet. But thegreat sales managers are all able to make it happen. Read interviews withplayers from great sports teams that have won championships and the commonattribute they cite for their success is the high-level of trust that theteammates had in each other. In short, they had each other's back. Have yourteam's back.

My first sales manager was Ray. Raywas the most no-nonsense manager I have ever encountered. (My hiring interviewwith Ray lasted 2 minutes and he said all of 12 words. But that is a story foranother day.) It was primarily through his coaching that how I first learnedhow to sell (and be a sales manager.) Everyday we sat down and reviewed each ofthe deals I was working on. He taught me how important it was to not waste aminute, hour or a day if I was stuck on a deal and needed advice to see what Ineeded to do next. I remember coming into the office one morning when I was inthe midst of a month-long sales slump and Ray was standing by his desk with hisjacket on and car keys to his big red Oldsmobile jangling in his hand."C'mon," he said. Let's go make some calls." We'd spend themorning talking to prospects. Sometimes I'd take the lead and sometimes Raywould take the lead. But I would always come back from those calls smarterabout selling and motivated to knock it out of the park.

Being an effective coach means nurturing the success of the people who work for you. At the end of the day, that is the highest success a sales manager can achieve. If you're a sales manager, and you're not coaching, what the heck are you doing?

5 Common Missteps of Sales Managers

A sales manager at the helm of a sales team has theresponsibility not only to manage the definition and implementation ofeffective sales processes but must also provide the leadership and coaching hisor her sales team requires to effectively utilize the sales processes toachieve and exceed their goals. This blend of strategic and tactical skills isnot easy to achieve. Sales Managers often are more comfortable with one aspectof their sales process leaving them to neglect others. That is human nature.

Being aware of the five classic pitfalls nearly all salesmanagers experience at one time or another will help you avoid unnecessarysetbacks and smooth your path to sales growth.

1. Protecting the Status Quo

As important as a sales process is, a slavish adherence to thestatus quo is the first step on the road to failure. Generally, as a sales teamis developing, a great deal of attention is focused on creating the structurefor sales activity and sales growth. Managers make the mistake of assuming thatonce their sales process is in place that they can solely focus their effortson tactical sales management. The problem is that elements of your salesprocess may not be a perfect match for your target market or for theindividuals you have on your sales team. As a sales manager you must payconstant attention to your sales process to ensure that it is always supportingand not impeding, your sales efforts and take immediate steps to revitalize itwhen it has become outdated or stale.

2. Losing the Urgency

A second pitfall sales managers have to confront is losing theirsense of urgency. This is not to say they become complacent. Rather they don’tact and manage with the requisite responsiveness. Prospects and customers havequestions and want answers in Zero-Time in order to make informed purchasedecisions in the shortest time possible. Neglecting to reinforce this urgencywithin your sales process and your sales team will inevitably lead to adecrease in responsiveness and, ultimately, orders. In sales, everything isurgent or needs to be. As a sales manager, if you aren't maintaining thisattitude of immediacy in all that you do, you risk failure.

3. Failing to Measure

Neglecting to establish metrics for key processes andoverlooking the necessity of regularly measuring how the processes areperforming is a common oversight that negatively affects sales productivity. Asales process is not an abstract concept but a discrete set of required stepsto achieve a certain goal within a certain period of time. As a sales manageryou must continuously measure the outcomes of your core sales processes andtake the necessary steps to refine them and make them even more productive.

4. Providing Incomplete Training

Sales managers often fall into the habit of providing limitedtraining for their sales team. They focus on isolated skills and producttraining to the exclusion of integrated sales training that teaches how todeploy their skills and knowledge within their sales processes to win customerorders. Sales people have to be trained on their processes as deeply as ontheir sales skills and product knowledge. Ignoring this training is akin toputting 11 football players on the playing field and telling them to justimprovise plays and do whatever they please.

5. Swimming with Minnows

Too many sales managers keep chronically underperforming salespeople onboard well past their expiration date. You don’t want to keep swimmingwith minnows when you need to be cruising with orcas to make your numbers. Ifyou have salespeople who aren’t suited to sell your product or service thenevery minute you keep them is a minute too long. It is a myth that goodsalespeople can sell anything. To ensure the growth of your company,salespeople must have experience and skills that will enable them to becompletely responsive to the information requirements of their prospects inZero-Time. If they don’t, they must go. Period.

It has never been easy to be a sales manager. However, if youcan avoid these common missteps then you, your team, and your company will allbenefit.