Developing your High Performance Salesforce

Developing your High-Performance Salesforce

If you were starting from scratch, would you design the salesforce you’ve got today? Probably not but then few of us start with the luxury of a clean slate.

Instead, the group you have is an amalgam of the people you inherited and the people you’ve recruited since you took over the team. But, all too often, performances within the team vary greatly.

A typical salesforce will look like this:

Only 16% of a salesforce are typically considered as successful workers

But where did the Poor and Average performers come from – and what can you do about it?

What can you do?

You could sack all the Poor and Average Performers and then recruit only Top Performers. But unless you’ve dramatically changed your recruitment process (a topic for a different blog), that didn’t work out too well last time, did it? You risk ending up with the same graph but with different names attached to the tags ‘Poor’ and ‘Average’ Performers.

Sacking poor and average performers won’t solve the problem

What’s the alternative?

Develop your own High-Performance Salesforce, based on people you already know and employ. But it helps to know what’s achievable.

Poor performers are unlikely to rise to the performance level of your best people. But you can improve their performance if you identify where the performance gaps are. Any improvement will contribute to your target.

Average performers may well be Top Performers-in-waiting – IF you can remove the obstacles that currently prevent it happening. If you know where the gaps/obstacles are and provide them with targeted Learning and Development, it will bring them closer to, even alongside, the best people you employ.

How do you do this?

Your sales numbers tell you who’s performing well – but they don’t tell you why?

You need to understand what it is about your top performers that sets them apart from the rest.

Why are they able to:

  • Quickly identify opportunities?
  • Delight their clients?
  • Close sales quickly?

… and most importantly – why can’t everyone else do it?

Top performers are great at closing sales

Great People Inside’s Dimensions assessment tells you:

  • what makes your top performers so great
  • why your average performers are less effective
  • how to improve your least successful performers

By working with you, we create an assessment tailored specifically to your organisation. This includes a benchmark created from your top performers (not a random collection of external organisations).

This assessment is then used to measure all of your sales team.

By doing this, you are able to provide the individual development needed to improve your sales figures, in the middle of a recession, with the team you already have.

What’s more, the same benchmark will help you recruit better when you have vacancies to fill.

Use your development budget to Develop your High-Performance Salesforce. It could be the best money you’ve ever spent.

Email me at [email protected] or call 01494 573 572.