1. Sales supervisors are the key to success I have played a part in the reorganization and performance improvement of over 100 large sales forces. It’s my experience that whether change succeeds - and whether results significantly improve - depends much more on sales supervisors than on salespeople. When I’m working to improve the performance of a sales force, I give most attention to building competent sales supervision and sales training.

2. Fewer accounts means more sales Salespeople love to have lots of opportunities. A salesperson who has ten customers to chase feels much safer than if they had only five. As a result, many salespeople are half chasing twice as many opportunities. They don’t sell deeply enough, they don’t plan adequately and they lose business to competitors who put more resources into the best opportunities. I often find that I can get a dramatic improvement in results by taking away 20 - 30% of a salesperson’s prospects. Salespeople hate this and they argue against it - but it works.

3. Salespeople must become value creators Too many salespeople are “talking brochures”, trying to show customers how their products or services are better than competitors. This is traditional value communication selling and it no longer works. Salespeople today must move from value communication to value creation. The salesperson must add as much value as the product. This calls for creativity and problem solving. Selling is no longer about persuasion.

4. Coaching brings results Every world-class sales force I’ve worked with puts great emphasis on coaching. They don’t just give lip service to coaching; they create systems and processes to make coaching happen. Yet few sales managers understand important coaching and sales training concepts, such as how skills coaching are different from strategy coaching. The best way to improve sales results is to make effective coaching and sales training happen.

5. Integrate sales and marketing I’ve been working closely with Philip Kotler, the marketing guru, to find ways to help sales and marketing work better together. When we published some of our thinking recently in Harvard Business Review, we were flooded with emails from CEO’s, Sales VP’s and Marketing VP’s from all over the world. So we know it’s an important topic and exciting new ideas are being tried out.

The constant complaint of the sales manager: why hasn’t that deal closed yet? A million excuses get surfaced, but there are four (and only four) reasons that your deal hasn’t yet closed, and our suggestions on what to do get that deal back on track:

• Reason #1: Unfamiliarity. It generally takes more than one (and often several) meetings before a customer will feel comfortable working with a sales professional and the professional’s firm. Fix: Get in front of the customer!  If you can’t afford to travel to see everyone you need to see, try using web conferencing or other online tools.
• Reason #2: Bureaucracy. Many organizations have a complex decision-making process that involves more than one buyer. Often even the CEO wants consensus with other executives before a major purchase. Fix: Interview your customer contacts to discover that actual decision-making process.  Then devise a plan to influence the process.
• Reason #3: Competition. It might first be necessary to unseat a competitor before the sales takes place. That can take time, especially if the competitor is internal to the customer, as when you’re selling outsourcing. Fix: Discover the competitive landscape and who has the inside track.  Build a campaign that specifically addresses the competitor’s weaknesses.
• Reason #4: Priorities. As important as the sale is to you, it may not be all that important to the customer. People can only focus on a few things at once and your offering may not yet be at the top of the stack. Fix: Revisit your customer contacts and build a stronger financial case.  Get the customer to agree on how much it will cost them if they don’t buy now.