A Blueprint to Develop Sales Talent

The word "process" is tossed around a lot these days. The best example of a successful process for me comes from recently watching the University of Alabama football team. In 2007, the University of Alabama had no football players drafted to the NFL and they lost six games. Two seasons later, Nick Saban's team won the national championship, had six All-Americans, multiple players drafted to the NFL, and a Heisman trophy winner. The first thing I read when the new coach Nick Saban was hired in 2007 that signaled his upcoming success was when he said "always focus on the process; the goal will take care of itself." He also said "do not focus on the score, whether ahead or behind; focus on the next play and how you will dominate the competition one play at a time." Now, some may say my bias to the Crimson Tide makes me impartial. That may have merit, but these words came from Nick Saban's 2005 book titled "How Good Do You Want To Be?" when he won the National Championship at! Louisiana State University. The point is, Nick Saban has a successful process that he replicates no matter where he coaches.

Objective Management Groups research indicates 91% of the companies they evaluate do not have a formal, structured, repeatable sales process in place. Of those that do have a sales process in place, few actually consistently execute that process. Today I want to introduce you to a repeatable sales process. This sales process can produce national championship results and is based on 240 sales behaviors. The behaviors roll up into 21 sales competencies, which in turn become internalized selling strengths we call "success elements." When you recruit sales people, you must assess them to determine the hidden weaknesses which prevent them from consistently following these behaviors. When a sales person has mastered most of these behaviors, you'll spend less time "on boarding" new employees. In addition, these sales recruits have over a 97% chance to be successful in your sales organization. Coach Nick Saban has impressed football fans with his recruiting process. What this mea! ns is he has a template and assessment process that he uses over and over to select the best talent for each position. He does not waiver from that list and he makes sure character is one of the main ingredients. Ask yourself, do you have a recruiting process that is disciplined and uses a template and a screening tool to uncover 240 selling behaviors?

You may be wondering what you can do to help your existing sales team follow consistent selling behaviors. The next step in the sales development process is to conduct an "Impact Analysis Report." You must determine how many of the 240 selling behaviors each member of your sales team has mastered, plus uncover hidden weaknesses. This report will tell you about the people, systems, tools, processes, strategies, and tactics your existing sales team uses. Once you've completed and analyzed this report, you can start on your journey to develop both your new recruits and your existing team. In some cases, you may need to realign your existing sales team and push out some dead weight. Watching Coach Nick Saban's process recently at the University of Alabama, fans started to see dead weight eliminated very early in the process with transfers and drop outs from the team.

This realignment is where things start to fall apart in the corporate world. The reason for this is "excuse making" from sales people, and especially sales leaders. A recent example that comes up has its roots in this statement "at least I'm better than most of my competition, so why do all this work the process calls for?" Again, I refer back to the football analogy. When you have a weak bench, the top players are not pushed to be their best because there's no competition. The players tend to move toward complacency. Most companies cannot see this until it's too late and the competition and/or the economy starts to take away market share. A common theme expressed by sales leaders goes like this: "We are meeting all our goals." My answer is perhaps you set your goals too low and are not focused every day on the process.

The first two sales competencies to work on should be Destination and Compass. Destination and Compass involve setting goals, creating a track to run on, and tracking goals properly. Here are the competencies and behaviors you should work on to master these two competencies.

Destination: Has A Written Goals Plan: Focused and Clear Vision Based; Specific; Realistic; Relevant; Measurable; Compelling total unwavering unconditional commitment.

Compass: Follows a Written Goals Plan: Knows what must be done and why; Has developed action plans; Follows action plan; Has determined possible obstacles; Has a plan to deal with obstacles; Has check points and calibrates weekly and monthly; Debriefs daily;

Come up with a formal, structured, repeatable sales process to ensure that both your current sales force and new recruits are following behaviors that will lead to success!