{"id":6823,"date":"2014-04-09T10:03:07","date_gmt":"2014-04-09T14:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theweekinimaging.com\/?p=6823"},"modified":"2014-04-09T10:03:07","modified_gmt":"2014-04-09T14:03:07","slug":"success-at-the-toughest-job-in-the-company-sales-management-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/feature-articles\/2014\/04\/success-at-the-toughest-job-in-the-company-sales-management-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Success at the Toughest Job in the Company: Sales Management Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sales<\/a>For companies with sophisticated sales operations territory design is paramount to maximizing their investment in sales professionals. Can you imagine starting your sales career at IBM, GE Aviation or Oracle and being told, \u201cyour ZIP code is 19010 go out and find some business?\u201d<\/p>\n

These companies realize how expensive it is to attract, hire and train a qualified sales professional and they are certainly going to make sure that they use their sales professional\u2019s expertise to maximize revenue and profit. Yet isn\u2019t telling sales professionals to go out and randomly find business exactly what many of you do that are reading this sentence?<\/p>\n

When I am asked how I would design a territory I focus on two parts, device in field accounts (DIF) and zero based accounts (ZBA) with a maximum of 250 accounts per sales professional, fewer if they are calling on larger accounts. I almost always get a response similar to this: My reps have 2,000 accounts each so who is going to call on the other 1,750 accounts in their \u201cterritory.\u201d\u00a0 My rejoinder, \u201cthe same person calling on them today\u2014nobody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at some simple math: There are 520 hours in a quarter and a star sales professional could probably spend half their time engaged in selling activities, or 260 hours. If an account were worth a sales professional\u2019s time it would have to be worth at least one hour per quarter, wouldn\u2019t you agree? Now see how I arrive at the maximum quantity of accounts a sales professional can effectively call on? The next concept in territory design is that not all accounts have the same revenue and profit potential so make sure you use that knowledge when designing an account based territory.<\/p>\n

Now that you have your account-based territory, the sales professional\u2019s job is to get appointments at the correct level within those accounts. I consistently see sales consultants, trainers, and industry players talk about \u201cgetting to the C level,\u201d but is that really logical? The accurate answer is it depends. If you are calling on very small businesses, under $10 million, then yes, you want to get to the \u201cC level.\u201d Unless you are in a very rural area or your sales force is selling a service focused on the small company, such as managed network services, the very small customer might not be the best use of your sales resources. If you are calling on companies smaller than $30 million, the CEO may still make the decision on what you sell, but you\u2019d have to expand your target to the top finance person as well; greater than $75 million and you can almost certainly drop the CEO\/owner and add IT to your prospect list and over $75 million you\u2019re probably at a director level, more than likely in IT.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s this have to do with management? First and foremost, territory structure belongs at a management or executive level and guidance on who to target also falls to this group. But once those two decisions are made it is the manager\u2019s role to help the sales professional develop these contacts. How frequently have you been told that your sales force cannot get enough appointments? What do you do track their phone calls? I wouldn\u2019t. Rather, I would have the manager work with each failing sales professional to help them get more appointments. That help could include reviewing the communications the sales professional is sending out and helping them improve them or focusing the sales professional on the correct type of communications.<\/p>\n

This employee development carries into every step in the sales process. There may be some sales team members who can get the appointment but don\u2019t ask enough questions to conduct a good discovery during the initial meeting and miss the business case for what they are trying to sell. Maybe the sales professional identifies the business case but can\u2019t design the proof of concept or justify it financially.\u00a0 It\u2019s up to the manager to identify each team member\u2019s developmental areas and then compose a plan to address them. Does that mean the manager needs to be super human? Not a chance. It is simply the manager\u2019s job to design the developmental plan, not necessarily be the person doing every aspect of the training.<\/p>\n

Now comes field time, which is critical to evaluating many required skills of a successful sales professional. In order to be effective, field time needs to be well defined and planned. Before a manager accompanies a sales professional on a meeting with a prospect or client they should get together to define the goals of the meeting as well as to discuss what is expected to occur.\u00a0 This happens in a location where both parties can concentrate on the meeting and where there is Wi-Fi access to research and validate discussion points. That means it doesn\u2019t happen in the car ride to the appointment.<\/p>\n

Optimally, this planning session occurs the day before the client\/prospect meeting and lasts about 10 minutes. I could write an entire paper on how the meeting would play out in different scenarios, but I\u2019ll use a proposal presentation with a ZBA prospect for this example and I\u2019ll assume the manager has not been engaged with the client to date. First and foremost, the manager is not going out on the proposal presentation to \u201cclose the sale\u201d and try to be a super hero; what he\/she is doing is using the meeting to evaluate and coach the sales professional.In the planning meetings I\u2019d want the manager to know:<\/p>\n