Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but a sales slump can, and will likely happen to every business at some point. One minute, your company sales are cruising along, only to be hit by stagnating or plummeting revenue. These speedbumps in growth can be caused by a variety of reasons, but business owners and sales leaders need to be able to recognize early warning signs and commit to the right steps to get back on the path to success. Too often, there is pressure to do more, when instead the approach should be on doing the right things better.
Current business conditions have brought many new obstacles and distractions which have salespeople’s heads spinning as they try to determine effective next steps. The new sales landscape has also made holding salespeople accountable challenging for owners and sales leaders.
If this sounds familiar, it is time to usher your salespeople into a new normal that will make them stronger and more resilient performers. The first step is for company leaders to get a pulse on the conditions the salespeople are navigating within. Just as important is to take note of your team’s mindset by gauging their confidence level and readiness to engage in a new landscape. Leveraging a senior sales consultant is a worthwhile consideration for such an important evaluation to ensure an effective recovery plan can be developed. It’s natural that your sales reps will need to regain their self-confidence by seeing new approaches modeled. Providing them with a resource that has a proven track record navigating changing market conditions, will expedite their ability to transform their sales approach.
- Incorporate Activity Reporting
If your sales team is struggling, daily check-ins for a period of time can create a way for your salespeople to share a high-level review of their day including successes as well as difficulties. Avoid turning this into micromanagement by encouraging use of technology to simplify the process. Activity reports can be done with a voice recording, video or chat tool. Drop them a call, voicemail or email every few days after reviewing their daily reports to share feedback, encouragement, and ideas. The goal of daily activity reporting is to bring focus to the fundamental sales activities needed to grow results and to spot early signs of trouble, lack of alignment or to collaborate to get them “un-stuck”.
Based on individual progress, work up to a weekly report cadence once you can tell the salesperson is on the right track with activity consistency, positive mindset, and renewed clarity on how to navigate. This report can dive in deeper on client activity, sales numbers, difficulties, and goals for the upcoming week. And again, make sure you are responding to the weekly reports to engage with your team. Owners and sales leaders should consider taking the information from the reports to summarize in a weekly message to the sales team. Recognize individual successes, help set goals, give encouragement, and address issues from a leadership role to maintain an open line of communication with the sales team while also fostering the spirit of teamwork.
- Shift from Time Management to Productivity Management
We cannot manage time, but we CAN manage our actions. It may seem elementary, but it’s time to revisit the basics of prioritization with your sales team. Without basic best-practice guidelines in place during turbulent times, even a top performer can get derailed!
Walk through the basics of calendar blocking for prospecting time, ending every day with creating a plan for the following day, and protecting time by grouping together meetings and non-selling activities. Let your team know where you want them spending their time and focus throughout the day.
While it sounds simple, productivity is generally a difficult skill for salespeople to master due to how their brains are commonly wired. This is exacerbated given the multitude of tasks to be accomplished each day. With a little guidance, you can lead your team to not think about “multi-tasking” for portions of their day. Instead, by them giving undivided attention and focus to the sales tasks at hand, they will have the clarity to achieve success and complete all necessary customer objectives more effectively.
- Virtually Moving Ahead
Like it or not, virtual meetings will continue long after the pandemic is behind us, so it is essential to ensure your team is acclimated to engaging with customers in this format. Start by determining if your team is prepared, knowledgeable, and comfortable with adapting their sales approach, including embracing the technology needed to efficiently lead and run meetings. Don’t take their stated confidence for granted. Consider virtual meeting training as the “new normal” format to support the likelihood that virtual selling will continue for some time, maybe forever in certain industries. Learn virtual best-practices and use these tools to differentiate your company from your competitors.
Even though the goals of virtual and in-person meetings are the same, you will likely need to partner with the sales team to create new approaches and tactics for virtual meetings. Sales teams need to adapt their approach to prospecting, building rapport, uncovering needs and gaining buy-in, as all of these facets of the buy/sell relationship are different in a virtual environment. As the leader, it is your role to ensure the team has access to proper technology, and easy to use digital versions of all documents. Schedule and lead training sessions using role-plays through your video platform to evaluate and improve sales performance. Your company’s digital selling experience demonstrates your company’s professionalism and will influence the customer opinion and buying decision.
While no business owner or sales team leader wants to experience a sales slump, it’s bound to happen. The key to getting out of the slump quickly will be dependent on the company leaders recognizing the warning signs and partnering with the sales team to create a path forward. Even starting with the three simple changes we mentioned above, consider it the first step up toward recovery. With salespeople anxious about job security and other personal challenges, given the current conditions businesses are experiencing, supervisors who push and seek to control may only amplify the stress. These times call for owners and leaders to shift their focus from pressing for performance to supporting their people and leading the way to provide a sense of direction.
Interested in learning more? I am happy to offer you a FREE SALES ASSESSMENT as a resource to help you uncover the key areas you need to focus on to improve your overall sales performance.