Goals Can Generate
Robust Sales At Telecoms
By David Saxby
Every telecom wants to make sales and it
should come as no surprise that salespeople are a critical part of the
process of helping customers make purchase decisions. But it doesn’t occur
to many telecoms that their sales force would be more effective if it had
goals.
Let’s face it, salespeople could use a little help. The salesperson who
picks up the phone to answer a call or who greets customers that walk into
the lobby to buy a product are expected to create an excellent experience
for every customer and make the sale – all while dealing with customer
rejection and concerns about the price of the product. And then there are
customers who insist on comparing your telecom’s products to the
competition.
Help can come in the form of motivation, and sales goals can be an excellent
source of inspiration. Goals give salespersons a target to reach for. Goals
keep them focused on giving their best effort to sell the benefits of their
products to every customer they interact with.
But if you think telecoms routinely set sales goals and communicate them
internally, think again. Before I start employee sales training at a
telecom, I ask a number of questions. Do you have sales goals? Do you have
sales goals for individual employees? Do you have team goals? If you set
goals, are they brought to the attention of everyone from accounting to
field personnel?
Here are some typical answers to these questions: We don’t have any written
sales goals. We have an annual goal, but it’s not something we share with
the sales team. We have shared goals with sales, but the rest of the company
doesn’t have any idea what they are.
Telecoms that set sales goals and broadcast them within the company will be
more successful. Following are some ideas on how to make this happen.
Create goal ownership. Give salespeople ownership in creating the
goals. The challenge for any company is how to set sales goals and get the
sales staff committed to achieving them. Things won’t go well if management
simply creates goals and then expects everyone to hop to it. Salespeople
will make a half-hearted effort if they don’t have buy-in. Amazing things
will happen if they do.
Here’s an example. I have a telecom client that had never set goals
for its sales staff. I talked to management about it and, after a few
discussions, they agreed to give it a try. I suggested they involve their
sales team in the goal setting and they even agreed to that. The sales team
must have been inspired because it set a very big goal for the next month. I
talked with the sales manager at the end of the month and he was pleased to
report that the company had exceed the sales goal by 20 percent. The
salespeople were excited about setting a goal for the following month. That
was a win for the sales staff and for the company.
Understand motivation. When it comes to achieving a goal, every
salesperson is motivated for different reasons and understanding what
motivates them is critical. Knowing what turns them off is just as
important. One telecom I worked with had a salesperson who was consistently
the top performer. The company launched a new product and immediately this
person surpassed the sales goals. During a training session, I asked her if
I could share her success with the rest of the company. She declined. She
didn’t like the idea of public recognition or anyone making a big deal out
of her talent. Public recognition for hitting a goal may work for one
salesperson and backfire with another. The wrong motivation can have a
negative impact on a salesperson but the right motivation can cause them to
stretch and accelerate their sales performance. Sales managers must know
their individual staff members well enough to figure this out.
What does it take to make a sale? The most productive use of a salesperson’s
time is selling. Yet many salespeople spend endless hours doing tasks that
are not generating sales. Follow a typical sale from the initial contact
with your company through to the installation or completion of the sale. How
many different departments are involved in the sales process? Where did the
opportunity exist for the sale to get delayed or fall through a crack in the
process? Is there duplication in the process? What steps could be
streamlined or eliminated to improve the efficiency of the sales process?
What other actions were required to complete the order before the
salesperson could take the next call?
Outside sales teams can be just as prone to wasting time on non-sales
activities. A client of mine was experiencing weak results from the launch
of a new product for business customers. In conversations with the company’s
outside salespeople, I learned they were uncomfortable turning the sale over
to one of the client’s internal departments for completion. The problem was
that the client’s department did not pay attention to the details required
to complete the sale. The outside salespeople were continually dealing with
irate customers who were frustrated about not receiving the new service in a
timely and professional manner. In response, the outside salespeople
personally made sure all details of the orders were handled. They spent most
of their day babysitting orders to make sure the sales were completed.
Consequently, they were generating little in the way of new business. I
suggested the outside sales team designate one of their colleagues as the
project manager for all new sales. This person understood the entire sales
process, allowing the rest of the sales staff to sell. They were confident
someone was paying attention to the details.
Provide coaching. Selling is a learned process that requires
continual coaching and training. Sales managers need to be coaches for their
sales team. Coaching requires managers to play a number of roles. They must
bring out the best in each and every salesperson. They must help each
salesperson continually improve their skills, using recorded sales calls as
a tool for learning. They must recognize people when they do a better job.
Telling a salesperson he or she will be fired if their numbers don’t improve
isn’t much of a motivator. Acknowledging a salesperson for the small things
they are doing to improve their abilities will definitely keep them pumped
up.
If you want robust sales at your telecom, the simple act of setting goals
and then communicating them and helping people reach them will work wonders.
-------------------------------------
David Saxby is president of Measure-X, a Phoenix,
Ariz.-based measurement, training and recognition company that specializes in
customer service and sales skill training for utility companies. He can be
reached at 888-644-5499 or via e-mail at
david@measure-x.com. Visit the Measure-X Web site at
www.measure-x.com.
