Selling a lot of material is no longer just what you want your sales force to do.

Demands and expectations of customers are growing.  You must satisfy their needs.

Information technology is giving you more date, in more user-friendly.  The result is you need to more finely direct your sales force with the insights you now have.

Getting the sales force to do what you want them to do!

You have to decide what you want your sales force to do − that directly comes from your strategic plan or sales strategy. Therefore, you must develop a strategic plan and then create expectations for your sales force to support that plan.

Develop a list of the three to ten most important things you want the sales force to do − sales should be one of them, gross profits should be another.

Make sure your list can be easily, fairly, and accurately measured.  One measurement could be calling on new prospects, which measures activity.

The 4 critical steps of sales leadership again are:

1. Develop a strategic plan.
2. Create a set of 3 – 10 most important sales behaviors.
3. Fine tune them until they are easily, fairly, and accurately measurable.
4. Measure and reward the behavior you want.   Toasting measurable results or regions and/or sales people will get everyone’s attention.

Don’t expect great results if you only deploy and hope

Create a high performance sales team by holding accountability, goal setting, strategy developing, resource identifying, and quarterly or monthly conferences with each of your sales people.

At these conferences, do the following:

1. Hold them accountable for what they said they were going to do
2. Help them set goals
3. Help them create a strategy
4. Ask − how can I help

Follow these steps and your team will not only have better direction, they’ll better understand how critical their role is in delivering the results that the company needs and they signed up for.

Good Selling!