My toolbox to power-up your sales team in 2021

Covid-19 took the world by surprise and shocked most people by the impact and consequences. The effects on people and business are continuing through 2021! Social distancing and lockdowns are the new norms for many countries. Some industries, like the travel and conference market, are suffering most, whereas others are thriving.

Through creativity and thinking out of the box, we also see markets where people can stabilize their business and even grow. Creativity in selling comes in many forms and today, I would like to share my sales toolbox, which can help ramp-up your sales team and help grow your business. 

In my following postings, I will share some of the best practices that help organizations to thrive during challenging times.

Here they are:

Tools will only work when salespeople can adapt their mindset and try different approaches.

For that, they need the desire to achieve success and commitment to do all that is required ethically to achieve it. In times of crisis, some people react like rabbits blinded by headlights in the dark and freeze. When confronted with an emergency, you survive best by analyzing the situation and acting by using the best solutions available. Leadership is critical here.

Evaluate your Sales team’s DNA. People talk a lot about sales DNA, but what is it? Sales skills are not sufficient enough to be successful in sales. Sales DNA represents our way of thinking and our behaviour that impacts the way we use our sales skills. Sales DNA helps achieve the results needed during challenging times and difficult market conditions.

Embracing Technology is vital to be effective and efficient now and in the future. Remote selling has become a new standard during the pandemic for most professional salespeople. Still, more than 80% depend on the traditional way of selling. Embracing technology also means using a wide array of solutions that have a significant impact on results. Some examples:

Using CRM to manage sales processes, which includes customers, prospects and the whole sales process. And there is more: it helps you communicate with your markets effectively and efficiently. Your marketing efforts are made easy and the system will allow you to manage your whole work scope with much ease.

Many salespeople believe that CRM is meant for management to know what they are doing. That should not be the idea! CRM is used to help manage your processes and connect and communicate expertly with your market. One good example is the CRM by SAP, which we checked out recently.

Discover Membrain. On Tuesday the 24th of July 2012, I had my first contact with a Swedish organization by the name of Membrain. They claimed to have developed an advanced tool that would impact the way sales teams would work in the future. Membrain, now, is revolutionizing the way sales teams work and increase their performance.

We are a certified partner of Membrain. Click here to book a demo.

Virtual Selling. Stimulate video conferencing apps like ZOOM to have sales calls with prospects and customers and sell. ZOOM became one of the most popular video-conferencing tools during the pandemic. It is easy to use, communication is clear and the security has been upgraded to a high level.

LinkedIn connects business people from all over the world and at any level with each other. Spend at least 30 to 60 minutes a day analyzing the LinkedIn information to approach the right people who can be interesting to you. It is considered the number one Business Social Media.

Audionote 2 is an app that you download on your mobile phone or tablet. It has a linked index of your recordings that quickly provides invaluable audio context for your notes. Your recordings and notes can also be downloaded when working on your computer.  

Calendly is a tool that makes it easy to set appointments. Calendly connects with outlook. By sending out a link to your contacts, they can schedule a meeting or call with you when you are available. Calendly avoids wasting time trying to set appointments. It is easy to use and people only see when you are available. It is entirely safe to use.

Microsoft To Do is a task list app that helps you focus and plan efficiently. You can set up different to-do lists for private and business. After Microsoft took over Wunderlist, it was integrated with the To-Do app. Integrated with Microsoft Onenote, you have at your disposal a powerful suite of tools to plan and take notes and increase your efficiency.

ConstantContact is one of the best direct-mail apps. ConstantContact comes with predesigned templates to use when you want to be in contact with your market. They provide tutorials, Webinars and a knowledge base to help you create the most impact-driven mailings and grow your business.

Birthday Alarm is an app that is used to congratulate your business contacts. Most people appreciate it when you remember and congratulate them on their birthday or other events. It brings added value to your relationship with them. The app reminds you on time when you need to congratulate people. It has a ton of different free e-cards for different occasions and the possibility to adapt the message you want to send.

A nice feature is that you can send a request to your contacts requesting to add their names and birthdates to your list. These are then uploaded automatically.

For Business and Sales Leaders wanting to increase sales team performance

Objective Management Group OMG has developed the only existing sales assessment with a predictive validity of 92%. With the data of more than 2.100.000 profiles, the test provides accurate insights that will tell you exactly what to do to develop your sales team and optimize revenue growth and increase efficiency. The OMG sales test is also instrumental when recruiting salespeople and sales leaders. One aspect that sticks out is the predictive validity, which tells you if salespeople will perform now and in the future.

There are many more useful tools available for sales teams. The above mentioned are some of the best which will deliver relatively fast results.

If you want to know more, please reach out to me here or call me at +31 (0)642713033.

Why many Start-ups fail and how to avoid this

According to Review42 https://review42.com/what-percentage-of-startups-fail/, 90% of start-ups fail and 82% of businesses that fail do so because of cash flow problems!

This is an astonishing but realistic percentage, based on research.

Still, start-ups are created daily.

Initiating a start-up is exciting and fun. You have an idea; you think there is a market and you have the funding to start. A dream comes true!

Then, after the product has been developed, the search for customers starts. Customers are essential because they buy your product and pay for it. This generates cash which is needed to grow your start-up. As plenty of cash is needed for investing in research, development, and running the business and you have your hands full with managing costs, less time is spent focussing on sales. Then you do realize you need someone to find customers and convince them of your great idea.

So, you decide to start looking for that salesperson who will find prospects and turn them into customers who will buy and generate the so needed cashflow.

So far so good.

But here is where it often goes wrong. And that wrongness has to do with mistakes that are often made when recruiting and deploying salespeople.

From our practice, we very often experience that recruiting starts with the wrong criteria to search, attract, and select sales candidates. These criteria are usually based on the perception of people who created a wonderful concept but have little experience in selecting and hiring salespeople.

Some of the most common criteria that can lead to failure, are:

1. Hiring candidates who have worked with bigger and renowned companies. Why? Start-ups need to establish themselves in the market. Approaching the market with a new product and getting customers to trust you and buy your product takes a lot of perseverance, persuasion, skill, drive, stamina, and much more. Hunting for new business is something that many salespeople dislike. Salespeople coming from larger, well-established companies with all the needed facilities in place, might not be up to a lot of “do it yourself”.

2. Hiring salespeople just out of school to keep costs down. Inexperienced salespeople who have never been in sales before, are attracted to the so-called glamour of sales. It might take you months up to years before you discover that the candidate you “fell in love with”, is adding no value to your business.

3. Hiring candidates with a “sexy” but heavily inflated CV with lots of inaccuracies. It takes skilled recruiters with a sales background to analyse and spot the faults.

4. Hiring a recruitment firm with little to no sales experience to find the best candidate for you. Things become even more complicated when this firm refuses to use a sales-specific assessment for testing candidates. The reality is, that by the time you realize the candidate is not performing, the time has gone, revenue is not growing and there is little time left to find an adequate replacement.

5. Hiring an intern just from school to do the tough job of penetrating a market with a new product. The learning curve can be very long and steep and if the candidate has no endurance, failure is waiting around the corner.

So, your cash is limited, and you need a salesperson. Are there workable solutions? Yes, there are! Let us look at the options:

First, avoid being penny-wise pound-foolish. A wrong hire can cost you a dearly!

You do not need to spend a fortune to find a “killer salesperson”. The whole recruitment process, including onboarding the right person, can be done successfully and economically. You can do this yourself and save lots of money, if you have a good process and the right tools in place.

You can find the best salespeople to help you grow your start-up, by implementing a sales-specific recruiting process, combined with a sales-specific assessment. Our partner, Objective Management Group founded by Dave Kurlan has developed the most effective Sales assessment with a predictive accuracy of 97%!

It will save you time, money, and disappointments. And very important, this approach will help you grow your business significantly.

One more piece of advice: because of the pandemic, a lot of good salespeople have been side-lined. The market is ready for recruiting of the best!

If you want to know more, contact me here or call me at +31 (0) 642713033.