Your sales volume is off-target and going in the wrong direction. Are you asking the right questions to reverse the trend?
Few topics have been covered as often, and by as many experts, as sales performance and, yet, many executives are challenged when their sales teams underperform.
Troubleshooting the sales process
Your sales team didn’t grow revenues as expected last month or last quarter? Or worse, revenues declined. After a while, many companies with such concerns change the team structure, put a new sales manager in place, bring in an outside sales training firm, and hope for better results.
But months pass, and the new results appear to be no better than the prior ones, except perhaps with a new cast of characters or the old one in different roles.
A sales consulting approach
In our blog posts, we generally endeavor to provide answers to help businesses run better.
But what if the best answers are actually questions, different questions perhaps, that we believe you should ask to solve a business issue effectively?
Troubleshooting sales performance is such a situation. Here, we will take you through a number of sales consulting questions that sales and company leaders should consider when troubleshooting sales performance.
Changing sales leadership is not always the answer
So, you changed the head of sales, some sales personnel perhaps, and it did not reverse your declining revenue trend. What is the next step?
All you know at this point is that your top line was not trending as planned and that your first attempt to remedy the situation by changing the sales team didn’t work. Either your team worked on the wrong solution, or ineffectively worked on the right one, but your pressing problem remains unsolved.
It might be time to reframe the challenge.
Do you really know what affected your company’s sales performance?
Sales operations is part of business operations
Metrics considerations
A better approach might be to step back and assess the possible causes of, and context around, the sales performance.
How was the sales performance evaluated?
Was it measured against a specific sales goal? If so, how was the goal set? Was it based on year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter growth targets?
How were the sales goals supported when the target figures were set initially?
Did anything change since then that could have organically affected your sales performance? A change in the sales team, of course, but also changes in other areas of the company that could affect the sales team.
External forces
Were there any logistical challenges that slowed the delivery of your products or services? What was the financial impact of those challenges? If that impact matches your sales shortage, is the challenge that your company must overcome a logistical one instead?
Is the market need for your products and solutions unchanged, growing, or declining?
Did the competition change? Did it introduce new products or solutions that compete with yours? Did they increase their advertising approach or update their go-to-market strategy in a way that affects yours?
Internal forces
If your sales team relied on marketing demand generation, did the number, quality, or timing of qualified sales leads change during the last period? How many sales leads were received by the sales team compared to the prior quarter, to the prior year? And, were the lead profiles of similar quality?
Is your pricing competitive and consistent with your target market?
Could there have been a change in the quality of your products or services?
Were new products introduced or existing ones modified? Was your sales team trained on the changes? And, was the success of the training assessed and confirmed?
Is your team kept apprised of market changes? Is training or coaching available to your team to better address those changes?
How is your customer service group performing? How are you measuring their performance? Are your customers reporting positive interactions?
Has your Net Promoter Score changed?
How is your company culture? Could it have been affected by a recent event?
Other Sales Team Considerations
Finally, there are some considerations specific to the sales team culture and process.
Is the right sales leadership in place?
Are they attracting and hiring the right sales executives?
Is your sales leadership fostering a meritocracy mindset?
Do you have the right sales strategy? The right sales process? When was the last time either was updated, audited?
Is there a cyclicality to your revenues?
Were any changes made to the compensation or recognition of your sales team? If so, how were those changes received?
How were the team dynamics? Is any toxicity allowed?
Are good sales performers recognized and rewarded, and is coaching offered to those employees who are behind? Are you praising in public and coaching in private?
Was the sales underperformance evenly distributed amongst the sales team? What percentage of sales professionals came short?
Were the recent performances atypical for those sales executives who missed their targets? What reasons did the frontline sales professionals who missed provide?
Conclusion
When sales performance is underwhelming, our go-to reaction is often to focus on the sales team and the team’s leadership. And sometimes, it is correct.
But sales do not happen in a vacuum. Businesses succeed or fail as teams. Performances of functional teams, including the sales teams, must be assessed within context.
Proton Consulting Group is dedicated to partnering with our clients to create innovative and customized solutions to improve their businesses. Our business consulting services executives, including our sales consulting experts, bring years of experience successfully advising and deploying profitable, data-based solutions that will benefit your organization.