In every company there are those illusive TOP performers, the ones that make plan every year in what seems to be an effortless fashion. The question is, what’s their secret sauce? How do you replicate this success?
The anatomy of a successful seller has many facets:
•Innate Characteristics
•Skills/Selling Behaviors
•Coaching and Support
•Use of resources and tools
Let's take each category and drill down on what you would want to know to understand their success.
Are your sellers in the right role?
Everyone is wired differently. Some people can talk to anyone and get energy from making new "friends", others prefer to deepen relationships and are more comfortable selling deeper into accounts. No rocket science here! But, the question is how do you know which sales role is right for a new person joining your team? Some people do a great job asking "behavioral based" interview questions that can give them a fairly good sense of a persons preferences and fit. But, there are great assessments out there that can scientifically help you find the right candidate for any sales role you have. My vote is to take a more scientific approach rather than gut-instincts that can vary between hiring managers.
What are they DOING differently?
Undoubtedly, your top performers are behaving in a specific way that helps them bring in more business. They have a skill set that fits in your selling culture and almost guarantees them success. The magic question is: WHAT are they doing better and more often than the rest of the sellers on your team? After helping clients assess their sellers' behaviors for over 10 years, Beyond ROI has established a database of over 300 selling behaviors/skills. We've perfected a methodology that can determine which of these 300 skills your top performers are masterful at and then uncover gaps within the rest of the sales force that indicate where your training priorities should be.
Does support matter?
There is a big buzz in our industry right now around skill development coaching -- well... a buzz up in sales training and enablement groups, not so much at the front-line manager level. Sales managers already have a challenging job with more work than they typically have hours in the day. So, if you are going to ask a manager to take on another important task, giving them a tool that helps them laser-focus exactly where they can support their team member is what you want to do. The MyView Coaching Profiles from Beyond ROI will show a manager exactly where each team member stands in effectively using the KEY SKILLS that the organizations TOP PERFORMERS use on a regular basis. This type of tool increases the likelihood of productive coaching conversations ten-fold.
Have you given them the right tools?
Once again, top performers are a great barometer to tell you which sales tools and resources are needed to support their sales process and conversations. Getting feedback and understanding how the sellers use these tools is critical to the company but, the question is: Will they provide that feedback to an internal resource? Beyond ROI is an independent, third-party consulting company that collects information with promises of anonymity and then provides companies with aggregated insights that help them be more efficient and supportive.
So when you break it down, the secret sauce isn't that complicated. The question for you is this: Can you continue to guess at training and support methods, or do you want to be intentional in how you build your sales teams in a way that guarantees your success? The choice is yours!