How Effective is Your Sales Force?
1. Does your sales force 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). 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. Does
your sales force know how to get past gatekeepers? Better yet, do you
know if your reps have trouble with that part of the appointment setting
process?
Our clients know how to handle this situation.
3. Does your sales force leave voicemails when they
try to set appointments?
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 get 40% to 65% of their
appointment making voicemails returned.
4. Does your sales force know how to control the flow
of the conversation during an appointment setting 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 the Caponi Performance Group's Tactical Opportunity
Management 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 force 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 timeframes.
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