Sales Team Segmenting
In my experience, all sales teams can benefit by segmenting into three compartments. This assumes, of course, if you have more than two salespeople (LOL). The segments are the top twenty percent, the middle sixty percent, and the bottom twenty percent.
Twenty percent of all salespeople are the top producers. These are the men and women that get the job done. They bring in revenue on a consistent, predictable and profitable basis. They’re the people that we all would love to have in one hundred percent of our sales positions, all the time. All of the top producers have one thing in common.
Specifically, they all have a process that they use to manage themselves. They know, through self-process management, that for instance, they have made enough first meetings in the course of a week, or whether or not they have enough proposals pending. By understanding their own processes, they are able to take corrective action before they have a productivity or production problem.
The bottom twenty percent, on the other hand, doesn’t respond to training, punishment, coercion, cheerleading, you name it. In other words, the bottom twenty percent of most sales organizations is completely unsuited for sales. When these people are interviewed, they frequently say that they are in sales because they couldn’t get the job for which they want to college to train. As a result, recognizing that they needed a job, they applied for sales jobs because “they like people”. Training, coaching and/or bribing these people is a waste of management energy.
The productivity and profitability homerun that you can realize comes about when you help the middle sixty percent perform like the top twenty percent. There are many ways to address the transference of these sales process skills from the top twenty percent to the middle sixty percent. Regardless of how you do it (and I will present suggestions regarding these approaches in my next newsletters and blog posts), you should see a dramatic uptick in your organization’s revenue and profits when the middle sixty percent starts emulating the quantity and quality of activity consistently produced by the top twenty percent.
Take a look at your team. Top producers inevitably perform activities in different quantities and different qualities than the also-rans. Take the clue from the top producers and create/deploy processes to all of your team members that will produce results. Remember, it’s not your people, it’s the process. If you have any questions, please contact me. As always, I wish you…
Good Luck and Good Selling!!!
