How To Be Your Own Sales Consultant

You don’t need to hire an expensive outsider to help you jump-start your sales.

All sales leaders have experienced a salesslump. It comes with the territory.

Sales growth has stalled out. It’s a struggleto achieve your number. You seemed to have lost the recipe.

Sometimes things turn around quickly all ontheir own. Usually they don’t. Action needs to be taken. Now.

Often the impulse is to hire a salesconsultant. The thinking behind this usually has to do with getting an“objective 3rd party opinion” about what your problems are and what can be doneto fix them.

Sometimes that is the right answer. I’destimate in about 10% of the cases the challenges are complex enough to bringin an expert to help you.

However, in most instances, you can becomeyour own sales consultant to objectively assess and diagnose your challengesand come up with a plan to address them. It’s easier than you think.

I’ve developed a process I call the 5-Day Sales Fix to get things moving the right direction. Fast.

It involves a modest amount of preparation.And a full week of your time.

Here’s how it works:

You are going to devote one work-week to do adeep dive assessment of your sales efforts the way a competent sales consultantwould. Each day you will tackle a specific task.

At the end of the week you’ll have created aone-page sales plan that you can use as your road map for acceleration.

Following this intensive week you will investone hour per day on maintaining and extending your “outsider’s” perspective.

Ready?

Day 1 - MONDAY: Talk to your customers

RULE #1: The solutions to your sales problems are never found in the office.

The best way to assess your sales effort with any degree of accuracy is to talk with your customers first.

Task:Have a conversation with 8 current customers.

• Do it all on Monday. One call scheduled per hour.
• Book 30 minutes for each call. They are unlikely to last that long but reserve the time just in case.
• If your customers are in your local geographic area, then schedule some in office visits with them.
• Otherwise, these calls should all be conducted with video using a tool such as Zoom, Go To Meeting or Skype.
• Ask the customers if you can record the call for training purposes. (Then have the conversations transcribed afterwards.)
• Be sure to the ultimate decision maker.
• Tell them in advance what questions you are going to ask. There is no reason for surprises.

Questions For Current Customers:

• Why did you buy from us?
• What was your buying experience like with our sales team?
• What did our team do well?
• What do we need to improve?
• What business value have you received from using your product?
• How could we have helped shorten your decision cycle?
• Are you planning to continue to buy from us?
• If not, why not?
• If you had to do it all over, would you buy from us again?
• Would you serve as a reference for future customers?
• Do you have any challenges that we can help you with now?

Questions You’ll Answer:

• Do we truly have a product market fit?
• Is our sales team selling to prospects that fit your ICP?
• Do buyers believe that our sales team possesses the relevant skills and knowledge to help them make good decisions quickly?
• What is the buying experience is like with our team and how it can be improved?

Day 2 - TUESDAY: Talk to former customers and lost prospects

RULE#2: There are details about your sales performance you can learn only fromdeals you didn’t win.

Task:Have conversations with 4 former prospects (that did not buy from you) and 4former customers that no longer buy from you.

• Do it all on Tuesday. One callscheduled per hour.
• Book 30 minutes for each call.They are unlikely to last that long but reserve the time just in case.
• These calls should all beconducted with video using a tool such as Zoom, Go To Meeting or Skype.
• Ask the customers if you canrecord the call for training purposes. (Then have the conversations transcribedafterwards.)
• Talk to the ultimate decisionmaker. Tell them in advance what questions you are going to ask. There is noreason for surprises.

Questions for Prospects That Did NOT Buy From You:

• Why did you decide to buy from a competitor?
• What was your buying experience like with our sales team?
• What did our team do well?
• What needs to be improved in the buying experience that would make a difference in the outcome?
• If you did it all over again, what would we need to do to win?

Questions For Ex-Customers That Switches To A Competitor:

• Why did you decide to switch away from us?
• Did we fail to deliver the features and value we promised?
• Did you talk with our sales team prior to making decision?
• If not, why not? If yes, what happened?
• What could we have done that would have made a difference in the outcome?
• Would you be willing to work with us again in the future?

Questions You’ll Answer:

• Do we truly have a product market fit?
• Is our sales team selling to prospects that fit your ICP?
• Do buyers believe that our sales team possesses the relevant skills and knowledge to help them make good decisions quickly?
• How could the buying experience with our team be improved?

Day 3 - WEDNESDAY: Assess your sales team

RULE#3: Success depends on the right alignment values, skills & habits.

Assessingyour sales team is not just a single stepstrategy.  There are multiple componentsto assessing a sales team recommended by the experts.

• Perform formal assessments of your team’s capabilities.
• Assess and evaluate existing sales people as if they were new candidates for the role
• Determine which sellers are “keepers” and which sales reps will need to continue their careers elsewhere.
• Fine-tune the requirements for each position on your sales team.

Assessing your Sales Team

• Have each team member (sellers and managers) take a sales aptitude assessment. Use standard off-the-shelf assessment.
• Redefine or fine-tune the job specification for each sales position. What are the must-have skills, knowledge and expertise?
• Interview each team member. This is not a coaching session. Discover what each person aspires to achieve, what their personal and professional goals are and where they believe they need to improve.

Ask These 4 Questions In The Individual Interviews With Your Sales Team:

1. What is the big dream in your life that you are working for? Why?
2. If you could change one thing about yourself to improve your capabilities, what would it be and what would you do?
3. If a new boss took my place, what 2 pieces of advice would you give them about how to help improve your sales and the company’s sales?
4. How can I help you accelerate your career?

Questions You’ll Answer:

• Do the skills and knowledge of our sales team align with the needs of the buyer?
• Have we defined our sales roles appropriately and do we have the right people in them?
• What are the educational gaps that need to be filled on our team?
• Do we have the right management team and structure in place?

Day 4 - THURSDAY: Analyze Your Sales Process & Performance

RULE#4: A solid sales process won’t win you deals. but a poor sales process cancertainly cause you to lose deals.

Steps to Analyze Your Process & Performance

• Document your current sales process. Write it down step by step.
• Review prospecting and lead gen activities. Are you generating enough prospects or do you have a lead deficit?
• What are the 2 KPIs used to monitor your overall sales process. Do they correlate to success?
• What are the 2 key metrics used to monitor and measure individual performance. Do they correlate to success?
• Review account/territory assignments.
• Review commission plan, incentives and quota assignments.
• Update your qualification criteria based on your customer conversations.
• Review your pipeline. Remove the 50% that are bad prospects.
• Review all sales management processes.

Ask These 4 Questions In Your Assessment Of Your Sales Process:

1. Are we measuring activities or outcomes?
2. Do the activities we measure directly correlate to the outcomes we seek?
3. Are we equitably distributing accounts (and leads) or are they disproportionately allocated to top producers?
4. Does our incentive compensation plan align with and motivate the desired behaviors and outcomes from our sales team?

Questions You’ll Answer:

• Does our process align with how our customers want to buy?
• Are we using relevant data and metrics to measure sales performance? Is our sales process helping or hindering sales performance?
• What changes do we need to make to our sales process?

Day 5 - Friday: Write your 1-Page Sales Plan

RULE#5: There’s nothing wrong with sales that an order won’t fix.

Task:Analyze gathered data and create simple 1-Page sales plan

Your 1-Page Sales Plan:

• Define new 90-day objectives for team
• Define a max of two (2) key strategies and tactics for 90 day plan period (focused on adding new opportunities into the pipeline and closing existing prospects)
• Define achievable 90-day objectives for all individual sales people (these are not stretch goals)
• Define a daily 1:1 sales coaching process and schedule
• Define individual learning plans for each sales person
• Eliminate all external and internal dependencies (such as new product availability or economy improving)
• Define inter-departmental resources required to support the 90-day goal.

Details:

• New short-term team goals
• Focus on maximum of two strategies to hit 90 day goals
• Focus on achieving successes in short-term with qualified opportunities already in the pipeline.
• New short-term objectives for all sellers (to jump start individual success)
• Emphasis placed on daily coaching of all sales reps.
• Make immediate decisions on sales reps that are not a fit.
• Normalize policies on lead distribution and account allocation.
• Immediately implement individual learning plans to up-skill sales reps and managers.

FOLLOW UP: 5 hours each week during the 90-day plan period

During the plan period it’s essential that youdon’t stop the activities you performed to analyze your team. Don’t fall behindagain. Stay on top of your customers, your selling and your people.

Here’s your hourly plan for each day of theweek during the 90-days.

Monday: Talk to your customers

Every Monday set aside one hour to talk with two customers (or preferably meetthem in person). 

Tuesday: Talk to lost prospects

Every Tuesday set aside one hour to talk with two prospects that you lost or twocustomers that no longer buy from you.

Wednesday: Assess your team

Every Wednesday set aside one hour for 2x 30 minute conversations with individualsales people.

Thursday: Analyze your sales performance & process

Every Thursday set aside one hour to review individual performance of sales peopleand sales managers.

Friday: Review progress against 90-day plan goals

Every Friday set aside one hour to review KPIs for the 90-day plan and adjustyour strategies and process as required.

NOTE:

Execute this plan and you’ll create valuable momentum that will get you back on track and headed in the right direction.

However, it’s not meant to be a comprehensiveoverhaul and transformation of your sales efforts. That takes more time. And,quite frankly, initially that can be pretty disruptive to your sales efforts.

I recommend that you start with thisjump-start program. Rebuild the confidence of your sales team in its ability toexecute. Then start a longer-term program to build a high-performing salesteam.

That type of effort is more complex and likelywill require a consultant to help you.