How Effective Is Your Sales Team?

1. Do your reps know their “ratios”? E.g., the number of dials they must make in order to get through to a decision maker, to get an appointment (face-to-face or on the phone in a telesales environment). Or another way of looking at that same question; do you know the strengths and weaknesses of each of your sales reps?

For instance, most sales managers know how many face-to-face “first appointments” (or phone first appointments in telesales) their reps get. But most don't know how many “dials” each of their reps must make in order to get through to a decision maker. Do you know? And for every conversation they have with those decision makers, how many face-to-face appointments do they get as a result? The answers to those questions will help you determine whether you need to help them get better at the dialing stage (better prospecting, better lists, better times to call, days to call, getting through gatekeepers, leaving voicemails, etc.) or whether to help them with what they say once they get the decision maker on the phone to close on the appointment.

2. Do your reps know how to get past gatekeepers? Better yet, do you know if your reps have trouble with that part of cold calling?

Ours do.

3. Do your reps leave voicemails when they cold call?

Not only do our client's managers know they do, but they know what the ratio of voicemails left to returned calls is for each of their reps. (Do they need help fine tuning their technique?)

And they know that leaving voicemails is far more effective than not doing so. Our clients can expect to get 40% to 65% of their cold calling voicemails returned.

4. Do your reps know how to control the flow of the conversation in a cold call so that 90% of the responses they'll get can be anticipated?

Ours do…and because they can anticipate those responses, they're prepared to handle them and increase their odds of closing on the appointment.

5. Do you know how many new leads your reps are getting each week? And is that enough?

Ours do, and they know the many ways we teach to find new leads each and every day.

6. How accurate is your monthly or quarterly forecasting? Is it better than 80%?

Our clients are much more accurate than they were before using our methodology.

7. Do you know how valuable hearing a “no” is to your sales efforts?

Ours count them and actually look forward to hearing them, pressing hard to determine if a “soft no” (no returned phone calls, postponed meetings, incomplete requests, etc.) is really politely camouflaged “hard no”, at every turn. They also know that time spent on leads that you should have known would say no, is wasted time that could have been invested in truly qualified prospects.

8. Do you know the best technique that is guaranteed to shorten your sales cycles?

Ours do, and they apply the technique on every telephone call and every meeting…and it is so simple and it takes no time to learn.

9. Are you struggling to find enough prospects that currently “need” your product or service in your timeframe (e.g., this quarter/month)?

Our clients don't because they subscribe to our philosophy that good sales people understand that if the lead they are calling on truly “needed” their product/service currently (and a small percentage do), they would have started the process to fulfill the need…and called you (or your competitor, in which case you're probably too late). We take a totally different view of the process and use a process to uncover what the prospect is doing, where they are doing it, when they are doing it, with whom they are doing it, how they are doing it, and why they are doing it that way. We then proceed to help them find a way to do it better with our product/service.

10. How confident are you in your current pipeline? Can you forecast cash flow accurately enough to plan from it?

Our clients are VERY confident in theirs. As a matter of fact, most are 80% or more accurate.

11. Do your reps know who their biggest competitor is?

Ours do, and it's not “those other guys”. Your biggest competitor is the “Status Quo”, or what your potential prospects are doing today. After all, if they truly needed you, wouldn't they have already called you, (or “those other guys”)?

12. Do you know what the average amount of time your sales team spends on each step in the sales process?

Not only do our clients know, but also they know why it's important to manage to those time-frames.