3 ways to retain your high potential and talented Salespeople
Authored by Hugh Alford. Sales Training Consultant at TACK International
Your most valuable resource in Sales is your sales people
At the beginning of 2012 with its uncertain challenges it is worth considering how best to retain and develop your best potential and talent within your team. Here are three areas worth considering
1. Actively Manage your talent
2. Recruiting mature salespeople and those returning to work after maternity
3. Outsourcing your sales recruitment or Do it yourself ( DIY)
1. Actively Manage your talent
Sales organisations are more complex today.
There is a greater amount of segmentation and specialisation.
Today’s organisations feature global, strategic, major, territory and industry specific account development roles.
Successful attributes in one role will not necessarily equate to success in another.
Careful consideration and investment in selection tools is a trend among many top performing sales organisations. Consider the engagement matrix below:-
It’s easier to get your team cruisers, performers, joggers and stars doing 100% or 120% above target to improve their performance than getting someone from 40% to 100%.
“There’s a tendency to leave those achieving 120 % alone. Best practise suggests don’t. Instead coach them. You'll get more out of them.”
So with good negotiators whose strengths are in negotiating get more out of them by investing in their development.
At Planning for success 2012 - Negotiation Skills specialist Lindsey Byrne’s session will cover:
- Avoiding the key mistakes made in negotiations
- Practise using the top tips of negotiation
- Receiving feedback on your negotiation style
“Low turnover in your sales force is not necessarily a measure of success.”
Some sales managers need to release more people out and introduce more new people in while others should focus on keeping their top performers improving deal after deal.
In retaining sales talent, sales managers need to know who their top performers are and specific areas where they can help them develop their abilities.
One way of evaluating performance is through organisational assessment and coaching. At Planning for success 2012 Coaching specialist Steven Braid’s session on Seven Steps to Constructive Feedback will cover:
- Observing negative, destructive, positive and constructive feedback through an interactive exercise
- Learning how to use the seven step constructive feedback model
- Thinking about situations on where to apply the seven step constructive feedback model back in the workplace (planning, preparation and delivery)
Such skills create a constructive dialogue between salespeople and their manager’s, alignment on corporate strategy and objectives and identifies developmental priorities. The results help clearly identify any disconnection between the salesperson and the sales manager, and even the sales manager and sales leadership.
One of the key issues that sales teams face is the number of sales managers who were formerly excellent salespeople. While some of the attributes to be successful as a salesperson transfer well, it doesn’t always mean their becoming a successful manager.
Investing to make sure that their sales managers understand how to coach vs. sell, how to manage a sales pipeline from an organisational vs. individual point of view and how to lead their teams effectively through both internal and external challenges of 2012.
At Planning for Success 2012 Sales training Maven, Hugh Alford’s 20+ Ways to Generate New Business for your 2012 plans will cover
- Where are the opportunities and how best to exploit them in 2012?
- How to protect and expand your existing client business
- An A-Z of prospecting in a recession 20 +Prospecting and new business generating Ideas for your plans for 2012
2. Recruiting mature salespeople and those returning to work after maternity.
In the past many sales managers have been resistant to hiring older workers.
Former salespeople returning to the workforce after maternity, second career people – and they can be valuable to a sales force.
Go back a decade and Sales Managers were overpopulating their sales forces with young people
But today there is a severe shortage of young people demanding a sales career.
The average age is early to mid-30s. And there’s a shortage of talent. Therefore it’s crucial for organisations to look at and consider the more experienced people – people in their second careers, for example. There is a tremendous source of talent among experienced workers. You might remember that rather provocative survey from last year...
Some sales managers claim “A good salesperson can sell anything” There are exceptions such as highly technical products and services. Recruiting experienced salespeople from outside one’s industry makes good business sense and it’s a practise that’s growing.
3. Outsourcing your sales recruitment or Do it yourself (DIY)
HR departments have embraced the concept of outsourcing these services and have found a reduction in overhead costs and a competitive edge in the talent market.
More organisations are beginning to accept recruitment outsourcing because there is a measurable return on investment.
Recruitment costs an employer from between 25 % to 30 % of a candidate’s first year salary to the recruiter.
More sales managers have been using Linked In as a recruiting source. So specialist recruiters need to offer differentiated advantages to sales managers using social media like Linked In.
Nushi Stach and Hugh Alford from TACK International on training boot camp!
At Planning for Success 2012 Steven Braid along with the high energy management training professional, Nushi Stach, will deliver a session called Play Your Performance Management Cards Right. It will cover:
- The five key stages of the performance review process with advanced questioning and listening techniques
- Managing different people types in the performance review
- Coaching and different coaching techniques
Sally Moore, TACK’s North West Business Development Manager, with TACK researcher Hugh Alford, held an open forum session on the challenges of Sales leadership supported with data from the latest TACK research study at the Planning for Success open day in Manchester on 13 January 2012.
Attendeees had the opportunity to explore their approach to sales leadership and how teams' perceptions compared to their own
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